True Sisters (6 page)

And Louisa would be beside him!

When Louisa first heard an English convert ask, “Did you know Joseph?” she observed that her husband was uneasy and said the two had been only acquaintances. But she, like others, believed that Thales was being modest. She had been thrilled to meet someone who had walked with the prophet. That connection gave him an air of authority, and it was natural that the converts, Louisa included, were awed. With gentle eyes and a soft voice, she pleaded to know more. She would have loved Thales if he had never seen Joseph Smith, but his closeness to the church founder raised his esteem among Louisa and her people. He had not expected to take a wife among the converts, he told her when he proposed marriage, but he had been smitten at once by Louisa’s sweet oval face, the bloom of youth still on her, and her manifest faith. Besides, he’d confided, he was twenty-eight years old, and a man, even a man of God, had his needs.

“It’s true, then. I had heard so,” Maud, the woman at the cart, said. “You did know Joseph.”

“Bless you, Sister,” Thales replied, turning away before Maud could ask for details, for stories. The questioning could go on for hours.

Maud reached out a hand, touched his sleeve, but Thales did not stop. He turned back to Louisa, who said, “Father cannot push farther. You must help.” Thales appeared annoyed, but he shoved the older man aside and joined his wife behind the crossbar. They did not have far to go, and Louisa was grateful Thales was there, because they would need his help in setting up the campfire. Despite the days on the trail, Louisa’s family did a poor job of it. Louisa was not such a good cook, and she could barely manage over an outdoor fire. Her mother and sister were no better.

Pushing their way past the carts that had bogged down in the thick mud, which made every step an effort, Louisa and Thales came upon her two nephews, Dick and Jimmy, eleven and eight, the sons of Louisa’s widowed sister, Huldah Rowley. As they walked along, the two boys had played a game with sticks, pushing a rock back and forth to each other and laughing. They were young, still children, but old enough to help, and Thales let go of the crosspiece and grabbed the two by their shirt collars, propelling them along. “Where have you been? There will be no idle hands while I am in charge of this family. You are shirkers. You could stand a good hiding.”

Dick, the older boy, stood in front of his brother, as if to protect him in case Thales made good on his threat. “It’s all right, Jimmy,” he whispered.

Louisa thought to protest that the two were only boys, but Thales had made it clear from the beginning that she was not to question him. Besides, there would be hard work for them to do once they reached Utah. Thales had told her he was serving the boys well by insisting they do their chores now. He was a hard taskmaster, but he never asked a member of Louisa’s family or any other Saint to work harder than he did himself. She believed that it was Thales’s hard work, along with his faith and his practical bent, that had caused him to be chosen a leader of one of the hundreds.

“We can park the Tanner cart over there,” Dick said, pointing to a vacant spot under a tree. By rights, it ought to have been called the Chetwin cart, for Louisa’s father, who was head of the family, but Hall Chetwin deferred to Thales now, and rightly so, Louisa knew. Hall had been so humiliated by the incident in New York that he had let Thales take charge. They all—the sister, the in-laws, the nephews, and Louisa most of all—considered Thales Tanner to be their leader.

Thales ordered the boys to unload the cart, then walked off, saying he must see to his hundred. As soon as he was gone, Louisa shooed the boys away, telling them to go and play but to be careful that Brother Tanner should not see them.

*   *   *

Louisa and her family had arrived in America well ahead of other members of the Martin Company. They had embarked from Liverpool in December on the
John Boyd
with an earlier group of converts, landing in New York City in February. Thales, who had been called back to America the previous year, not to the valley but to Iowa to help with the handcarts, was to reunite with them in Iowa City for the last of the handcart treks to the valley that year.

The trip across the ocean was a difficult one for Louisa, whose sister, Huldah, along with their mother, Margaret, spent most of their time tossing on the bunks while Louisa and her father ministered to them. Hall was not well himself, suffering from a congestion in his lungs. Only the two boys traveled well, and they taxed both sisters, who took turns leaving their sickbeds to look after them.

Badly debilitated by the time they reached New York, the family decided to stay there until they recovered. Louisa wrote Thales to tell him they would travel overland to Iowa City in the summer, with the last of the handcart companies. She was disappointed, she wrote, for the two of them had been wed only a short time before Thales departed for America and she was anxious to join her husband. But without rest, her mother, Margaret, would never survive even the trip to Iowa, let alone the journey from Iowa to the valley.

Once on land, Louisa’s family, all except her mother, regained their energy, and, abhorring idleness, as did all the Saints, they found jobs. While Huldah took care of her mother and her sons and did the cooking in the boardinghouse in which they lived, which paid for their quarters, Louisa found work as a chambermaid. Although Louisa protested, her father, worn-out by the ocean voyage, nonetheless took a job in an oyster house.

They all liked America, their large rooms in Brooklyn, the fresh air, but most of all, they liked the money they made. And after a few weeks, Louisa suggested it would be best to stay in Brooklyn and wait a year to make the trip to Utah. Not only would her parents be in better health, but the family would have saved enough money to outfit a wagon. Margaret would be able to ride to the valley instead of walking next to a handcart. Besides, the wagon would hold everything they had brought with them as well as what they expected to purchase with their wages—linens and crockery, a bureau, even a rocking chair. With such riches, they would be better prepared to set up housekeeping in the valley.

Louisa wrote to Thales in Iowa City, telling him of the decision.

It is a splendid plan, is it not? With the money we will make, we will not have to go to the Salt Lake Valley as beggars. And by then, Mother will be recovered from her disabilities. At this time, she can scarce walk a half mile, and I do not believe she could ever manage fifteen miles every day. Mother is so convinced of the rightness of our plan that she says she must have a revelation before she will make the journey this year.

Then she added:

I have talked with the church authorities here, and they seem to have no objection to our decision. Could you not inquire there whether you could join us in Brooklyn? Surely there is much work to be done here among the Saints, and you would be welcomed. You and I could be together, and I would not be so lonely for my dear husband.

She was sure that Thales would approve of the decision to remain in Brooklyn. After all, he was a man of strong appetites, and the separation was hard for both of them. In fact, so confident was Louisa that she inquired of the woman who owned the rooming house whether there was a small room that she and her husband might share.

Louisa was stunned, then, when she received Thales’s reply.

I can scarcely believe that my wife, whom I never would have married had I known she prized the comforts of Babylon over her faith, has betrayed me by wishing to remain among the ungodly. I am resolved never to condone such an action. We are commanded to gather in Zion, and yet you are so weak that you place money before your duties to the Lord. I am ashamed that my own wife would wish to live amongst the heathen in that place of wickedness instead of with God’s chosen people in Utah.

He rebuked her further.

Does your mother not believe that God ordered her to make the journey when she joined the church? Does she demand more of Him? Does she believe our God speaks directly to her instead of through her betters? If she has only as much faith as a flaxseed, she will arrive in the valley without the least sign of sickness. It is only those who lack faith who perish by the wayside.

And then, most hurtful of all to Louisa, Thales blamed her father.

I put this at Hall Chetwin’s feet. He has not so much as one atom of the spirit of Zion but has much of the spirit of apostasy. He would make a shipwreck of his salvation. I had thought to write this letter to him, but I am so filled with anger that I do not trust what I might say.

A stricken Louisa told her family, “Thales says we must go.”

“What does he write?” her mother asked, reaching for the letter.

Louisa would not give it up. Instead, she said, “It is personal. He says only that we are not to stay in New York, but must prepare to leave from Boston when the converts on the
Horizon
arrive.”

The parents would not be put off, however, and her father insisted on reading Thales’s words himself. Hall turned white as he read the letter and grabbed on to the edge of a table to steady himself, then fell into a chair. “You must not read it, Mother,” he said, tears streaming down his face. But Margaret took the missive and read it, her face lined with grief when she was finished, because it was obvious to the others that she blamed herself for Thales’s outburst.

“You are not weak in your faith, Hall,” she insisted. “Thales can have no reason to say that. But he is right in prophesying that the Lord will strengthen me for the journey. We will go ahead. I want no one to question your commitment to the Lord.”

The three agreed not to show the letter to Huldah but instead to say they had changed their minds and were ready to leave. But Huldah found out the contents, because Thales had sent a second letter to the president of the church in New York, warning the elders that they must double their efforts to send the converts to Zion, that even his own family was being seduced by the wickedness of New York City.

My wife’s father, Hall Chetwin, is as close to being an apostate as any man I ever knew. He has convinced my family to remain in that place of sin instead of gathering with the holy in the Salt Lake Valley. I fear the devil has his clutches in him so deep that he will fall into hell.

Thales did not ask the president to show the letter to others. He told Louisa after they were reunited in Iowa City that he had written it only because he was concerned for her father’s soul and hoped the authorities would take him in hand and show him the error of his ways. But that had not been necessary. Hall was so disturbed by the charges that he asked to be rebaptized, and to show his humility, he turned over the responsibility for the family to Thales. The harsh letter accomplished its purpose: The family had gone at once to Boston to await the arrival of the
Horizon,
and then they had traveled with the converts to Iowa City. Her husband had been right to write such a letter. Louisa did not question that. But then, she never questioned the rightness of Thales’s decisions. After all, his orders came from the Lord.

*   *   *

Jessie Cooper watched Brother Thales Tanner rush by, his head high, as if he were in charge of the whole world, instead of just one little group of a hundred people. He was a little shorter than average, but he was broad in the back and as strong as the bull the Coopers had left behind on the farm. And if he did not have the fair face of her brothers, he at least was not unpleasant to look at. There was an air of assurance, sometimes of godliness about him. After all, the man had converted the three of them—Jessie and her brothers, Ephraim and Sutter. She felt a thrill when she recalled the way he’d talked that first time, the thunder in his voice, the fire, the cadence of words. His voice was the voice of mighty God, and Jessie felt as if the Lord Himself had been speaking directly to her.

Although a cousin, Rebecca Savage, had joined the strange church years before and gone off to America to live with the Saints, the three Coopers had not expected to be caught up with the Mormons. In fact, Jessie had thought her cousin demented. She and her brothers had attended the meeting out of curiosity, not religious zeal. She had expected to be entertained by the foolishness of the doctrine. It would be fun to laugh at the Mormons later on. The three of them had gone because it was a nice evening to walk down the lane, past the blooming lilacs with their sweet perfume, to the Chetwin cottage. Margaret Chetwin might serve tea and nut scones, and the Coopers were all tired of Jessie’s cooking.

But to their surprise, the three had been intrigued by the missionary. They had been skeptical, had asked questions, had not been converted so quickly as the Chetwins. But they went back, and over many weeks, they were taken up with the Book of Mormon, which told of a church like the one that Jesus had founded, a simple, honest church unencumbered by the pomp and rituals of the Church of England, for which they had no use. They were taken by the idea of leaving the used-up tenant farm for the virgin land of America, too. And there seemed to be a place for women in the young church, which appealed to Jessie. Eventually, Ephraim, then Sutter, and finally Jessie were baptized by the missionary Thales Tanner.

Thales had led their way to the true church. Jessie would always be grateful to him for it. He was a holy man. She would give him that. But Jessie did not like him much. He had called at the farm more than was necessary after the Coopers’ conversion, and her brothers had teased her that when the three made the trip to Utah, Jessie would go as Thales’s bride. Indeed, it was obvious to everyone that he was interested in more than Jessie’s soul. But she did not care for his domineering ways, his humorlessness, his assurance that he was right in all things, even beyond religion, although he rarely spoke about anything other than religion. “I bet he knows the number of whiskers in the prophet Brigham Young’s beard,” she told her brothers.

After a time, Jessie did not encourage him, and so Thales courted Louisa Chetwin. Those two were a better match anyway. What Jessie considered blustery in Thales, Louisa found authoritative. While Jessie thought Thales pompous, Louisa believed him inspired. Louisa was a timid little thing who would cling to a husband, while Jessie worked side by side with her brothers and was a match for both of them. Louisa had a fair, lovely look, a tidy figure, and curls the color of sunshine, and she was as nice as a sunny day, too. Jessie, whose hair was as black as the loamy earth she worked, was as broad as Thales, and almost as strong, since she did her share of plowing and harvesting. Her face, with its wide brow and high cheekbones, would have been handsome in a man but was too strong for a woman. Her mood could be as dark as a winter storm. Indeed, Louisa, who was obedient and as fragile-looking as chinaware, was far better suited to the missionary.