For Time and Eternity (20 page)

Determined to follow my husband’s instructions as closely as possible, I remained silent, until Kimana herself, still unaccustomed to some of our social mores, extended her own grease-splattered, flour-covered hand.

“I am Kimana.”

Sister Amanda took off her delicate lace gloves one finger at a time and pinched her fingers along the edges of Kimana’s thick brown ones. “How very nice.”

I heard the sound of crackling straw as Brother Kenneth crushed his hat. “I didn’t know you had
two
women, Brother Nathan.”

“Kimana is not my . . . That is, she . . .”

Nathan looked to me for help, but I smiled in silent obedience.

“I was too weak to leave when my family was chased away.” Kimana trained her narrowed eyes on Elder Justus. “Mr. and Mrs. Fox allowed me to stay.”

“Her home was here first,” Nathan said. He placed his arm across Kimana’s soft shoulders. Only he could offer a gesture with such sincerity, and I was once again reminded of the warmth of his heart. “Jesus came to the Lamanites. He ministered to them. Why should we not show equal kindness?”

“We heard some were so wild they could not be tamed,” Brother Kenneth said, holding his hat a little closer. “Heard about some terrible wars, and that we’d routed them.”

“All true,” Elder Justus said soberly. “But we have hope for this one’s soul.”

“Is she baptized, then?” Sister Amanda asked, leaning forward and studying Kimana as she would some token in a shop.

“Not yet,” Nathan said, giving Kimana a little squeeze. “But someday.”

Kimana’s expression did not change. She simply excused herself to see to the children, leaving me to transfer the gravy from the pot to the pretty china boat—yet another Christmas present from Rachel.

At Nathan’s command, our guests sat at the table, the places set with pewter at the head and the foot reserved for us. There was some brief conversation commenting on the beautiful, intricate carving on our chairs, none of it mentioning the fact that no two matched each other. Once the goblets were filled with fresh water and all the dinner had a place in the center of the table, Nathan held his hands out, inviting all of us to join for a blessing. I had Sister Amanda on one side and Sister June on the other, and as our hands rested together, I waited for the spirit of unity meant to accompany the gesture, but none came. Through the darkness of my closed eyes, I heard my husband’s voice asking Heavenly Father to bless our food, our words, and the decisions we would make at this table. At that point, I felt a shifting in the clasps on either side of me. I couldn’t wait to be free.

There was little more than small talk as our plates filled. The warm weather, speculation as to when it would turn. Crops. Gardens. Lumber and wool. Anybody who walked into the room would think we were nothing more than three friendly couples sharing a Sunday dinner, catching up after months spent apart. Such an observer might not notice the quiet woman at the end of the table. How she pulled the tiniest bits of meat from the chicken on her plate. How her eyes never left the pewter pitcher. How questions put to her were answered by the man at the other end, his joviality neither forced nor shared.

“Tell me, Brother Nathan,” Elder Justus said through a mouth full of biscuit, “how did you find New Orleans?”

“Intolerable. Not just the heat and the swamps, but the people. So much need for the truth.”

“And did you have a chance to share our gospel with them?”

Nobody but I could notice the shadow that flitted across his face. “I’m afraid I don’t have the gift of evangelism, sir. I was sent only to be an escort.”

“Oh, but you were a great deal more than that, weren’t you?” Sister Amanda looked at him, her eyes hungrier than I could stomach. “I mean to say, you explained so much.” She turned to me. “Your husband’s a fine teacher. He read to us every night from
The Book of Mormon
, so much I’d never heard before. And with such fire! I don’t know if he’d be better used as a missionary or an actor.”

I alone refrained from the low, gentle laughter that rumbled around the table. I well remembered those evenings on my own journey to this place. The evenings in our home before he left. More than anyone here I knew the power of Nathan’s words.

“We must be careful not to confuse the truth of Joseph Smith’s revelations with the fictitious stories acted out on a stage,” Sister June intoned softly.

“Oh no. What I mean to say is he just made the stories come alive. I had this sensation . . .” She set down her biscuit and laid her long, white fingers on her chest. “I can’t explain it.”

“Ah,” Elder Justus said, looking satisfied, “what we call the ‘burning in the bosom.’”

“Yes, that’s it exactly. A burning. Like my heart was on fire. And I knew that everything he said was true.”

I finally broke my silence, saying, “My husband has that effect on people.”

I might just as well have dropped a temple block in the middle of the table for the shocked silence my simple sentence brought about.

“It is the testimony and confirmation of the Holy Spirit that brings about the burning,” Elder Justus said, making my humble table his pulpit. “Nothing of man could bring it about.”

“No ordinary man, maybe,” Sister Amanda continued, her speech more breath than voice, “but you’ve got yourselves a real treasure here with Nathan—er, Brother Nathan. What a shame to waste him with woodwork when he could be spreading the gospel.”

“Our Lord was a carpenter,” Nathan said, amazing me with his humility. “I could not ask to be more than my brother.”

“Besides—” I aimed my eyes straight at Nathan, though my sweet smile was for the benefit of all—“being a missionary takes him so far away from home. And for so long.”

“Well, I for one am right grateful to have had ’im ride with us,” Brother Kenneth chimed in, seeming oblivious to the preceding conversation. “Rides like one of your Indians, and able to fend ’em off like a soldier.”

“Nathan, you didn’t—”

“No, darling. I didn’t shoot a soul. Heavenly Father gave us safe passage without bloodshed.”

“A blessing, indeed,” Sister June said.

“But you asked about New Orleans. . . .” Nathan managed to swoop the conversation into his net and spent the next several minutes regaling us with images I could hardly have imagined on my own. Stories full of music and women and color and wealth. He transformed himself with every new character, assuming accent and race to accommodate each tale. None of us had any reason to make the journey with him; he brought the city here to this little cabin in Cottonwood. I felt transported—rather, a longing to be transported. A burning desire, even though I felt I’d seen the city through his eyes.

That’s what he’d done to Sister Amanda. That’s what he’d done to me. While I wanted to hate him for bringing this woman into our lives, I could not. There at that table I was fifteen years old again, and he was a new creature to me. No doubt Sister Amanda and I had fallen under an identical spell. Pressed to speak truthfully, Sister June would have to admit to being similarly smitten.

“Then, of course,” Nathan said in preface to bringing us all to a gentle, sloping stop, “I saw the fairest sight of all.” I wondered if perhaps he’d forgotten that I still remained in the room, given the entirety of the table between us. His gaze lingered on Sister Amanda with such open admiration that there appeared to be a tunnel between them. “And I suppose,” he continued, pulling himself from his own charm, “that it’s time to address a very important question. As you all may or may not know, I have asked Sister Amanda to come alongside me as my wife, and she has consented.”

Sometimes, in the midst of a winter storm, the wind will blow with such intensity, its howling blocks out every other sound. You shout above it until you realize your strength is better served trying to stay warm in the midst of the blistering cold it heralds. And then, all at once, it stops, and the silence that follows is equally deafening. Such a howling had been filling my head from the moment I saw Sister Amanda Dunn sitting atop her wagon seat, and it stopped the moment my husband announced his intentions to make her his wife. My sister wife. Any hope I had of stopping this storm died, and I felt the weight of a heavy, cold blanket covering every part of my body. I saw my smiling guests through a haze of white and heard muffled sounds of cheer attempting to make their way to my ears.

Finally one made it through. The dour, drooping voice of Elder Justus. “And what is your say, Sister Camilla? You know under the word of the prophet you have a right to refuse this marriage.”

For the first time I had all eyes trained on me, and I felt my face and neck burn like flesh on snow. Looking back, I see this moment as yet another crossroad, like I was meeting a brash, young Nathan Fox for the first time. If I had thought for even a moment that my refusal would turn his heart fully to mine, that he would find contentment being a husband to me and me alone, that I would be able to share with him my rekindled faith in Jesus Christ and take him away from the false teachings of Joseph Smith, I surely would have refused.

But it would not. I’d witnessed Nathan’s struggle for his eternity, and I knew this to be only one stone’s skip in his quest for celestial glory. I would not share his struggle, nor would I prolong his suffering, for to do so prolonged mine.

Right there, in the presence of this company, I prayed for an answer—one that would satisfy my heart and Nathan’s need. And it came to me, as clearly as if it were spoken aloud from the depth of my soul. This was not a burning in my bosom; no wave of emotion washed over me. Instead, I felt nothing but utterly calm, logical peace.

I picked my words as carefully as I’d picked at my meal. “Scripture tells us that all things work for good to those who love God and are called according to his purpose.” Simply saying the Word of God aloud fought the battle for me. After all, I’d copied those same words into my journal years before I ever met Nathan Fox. Why should they be any less true given these circumstances? “I truly love the Lord. More, I think, than I did when Nathan married me.”

Elder Justus stared me down. “Do I mistake your tone, Sister? For it sounds to me like you see this as an opportunity to test the goodness of the Lord, rather than an act of obedience to his command.”

I stared straight back. “My Lord commands me to obey my husband. And he—” I shifted only my eyes to Nathan—“has been commanded to love me. As long as he is not in disobedience to his command, I see no reason to disobey mine.”

Elder Justus planted his hands on the table, preparing to rise from his seat. “I exhort you, Sister Camilla, to remember who it is that you address.”

It was Nathan’s honeyed voice that brought the man back to his seat. “I would remind you, sir, that you are speaking to my wife in my home.” He stood up then and walked around the table to kneel at my side, squarely between his first and soon-to-be second wife. “I’ve never been prouder of you than I am in this moment. I do love you—every breath as much as I did the first day I saw you. And your beauty has only grown since that moment.”

I sensed the women on either side of me had been moved to tears, but I shed none. I fought the heaving in my stomach, where the few bites I’d managed to swallow waged their own battle. Closing my eyes, I prayed for the peace of the Lord to come to me.

When it was clear that all were finished eating, Kimana and the girls were summoned in to help me clear the table and wash the dishes while Nathan led Sister Amanda and the rest of the company on a tour of our property. I would have liked to have been by his side when he walked them through the best of his work—the intricate, rejected chairs hanging on their hooks, the sketches for pieces commissioned by others. He would have a busy fall and winter ahead of him, and I looked forward to those evenings when he would come to supper smelling of sweet wood shavings. Then I remembered we would be sharing those evenings with Sister Amanda, and I refocused my thoughts on wiping the gravy bowl dry.

I fully expected to emerge from my restored home and wish my guests safe journey home, but to my surprise, only Sister June and Brother Kenneth took their leave.

“Sister Amanda must go through the Endowment ceremony if we are to be married in the temple,” Nathan explained as we walked back inside. “Elder Justus has consented to conduct the interview here today.”

“Of course. I guess I assumed—”

“She’s been a convert only a year last July. The timing couldn’t be more perfect.”

“Indeed. Shall I take the girls down to the creek?”

“Why would you? I think Amanda would like to have you all here as support. You remember how nervous you were for your own interview?”

I did remember. At the time I feared giving a wrong answer would somehow make me ineligible to be Nathan’s wife—a fear far greater than that of not being a Latter-day Saint. God alone knows what prompted Nathan to quiz me so thoroughly before, ensuring that I would answer each question perfectly.

“Did you give Sister Amanda the answers just as you gave them to me?”

He looked over his shoulder to see if Elder Justus heard my question, then leaned forward and said, “You know very well it is the Holy Spirit that prompts you to answer true.” Still, he winked through his response, and I could imagine what he and Sister Amanda talked about during those long, long miles between Christian civilization and this place.