True Sisters (7 page)

The two girls, both of them twenty-two years of age now, had been friends all of their lives, and Thales might have come between them by what was perceived by some as his tossing Jessie over for Louisa. Besides, it was clear that Louisa thought Thales such a fine catch of a husband that she preened in his company. But Jessie was relieved by the match, so she said nothing, even letting Louisa think that she had stolen Thales from her, for she valued Louisa’s friendship that much. Jessie attended the wedding, of course, and was the first to congratulate the married couple, telling Louisa what a stunning match she had made, and Thales that he was as lucky a man as ever lived.

But she thought Louisa was not so lucky, and she was saddened to see how Thales dominated her friend, expecting her to wait on him and to accommodate the Mormon elders he brought home unannounced. Thales criticized Louisa’s cooking, her housekeeping, even the color of her bonnets, and he did not always do so in private. But Louisa didn’t seem to mind. “He is so patient in pointing out the error of my ways,” Louisa confided. “Am I not lucky to have such a husband?” Jessie held her tongue.

Jessie tried to concentrate on Thales’s good qualities—his knowledge of the Bible and the Book of Mormon, his earnestness in prayer, and his zealotry in living the faith. Thales was, she knew, a decent man, who would give a poor Saint his own cloak if it was raining or go out in the night to help a neighbor in need. There was an air of spirituality about him, of holiness. And something else. Jessie thought of him when she saw the hogs rutting.

Now, watching as Thales gave the Chetwins directions for setting up their camp, Jessie once again was grateful he was not her husband. He might hold sway over their spiritual needs, but Jessie and her brothers would never let him control their lives. In their lighter moments, her brothers sometimes made fun of Thales, imitating his speech as they ordered each other around. “I believe if you had married him, you would have come to wish him to embrace the principle of plural marriage,” Ephraim told his sister, “else you would have to have him all to yourself the day long.” He asked, “Was he ever known to smile?”

Still, the three knew that they were lucky to be in Thales’s hundred. “He runs it shipshape,” Sutter observed. The tents were orderly, the carts repaired at each stop, and Thales saw after his people, settling disagreements, admonishing the Saints to help one another, chiding those who failed to attend prayers each morning and evening.

For that last reason, the Coopers tried not to camp too close to the Tanner cart. The three were strong in the faith, but they did not believe that everything out of the elders’ mouths was ordered by God. They were not as dumb as cattle, Jessie thought, looking out at the herd of animals that accompanied them. One of those things they doubted was the everlasting prayer sessions that deprived them of sleep in the morning and work on the cart at night. One each day was plenty. The Coopers’ cart was among the poorest, and every evening they were taxed to strengthen and repair it. The other thing they believed was not God-ordained was the endless sound of the cornet that called them to their duties several times each day. “If I ever see the instrument unattended, I’ll make sure we never hear it again,” Sutter threatened. But to the Coopers’ regret, and that of many other Saints, the musician kept the horn closely guarded.

Prayers were still an hour or more away, so Jessie built a cooking fire that evening and began preparing their meal. The food was monotonous—bread, salt pork, greens they picked beside the trail, if they were lucky—but the simplicity of their diet did not bother her. She liked not having to prepare a large meal, bending over the hearth to tend heavy pots hanging from cranes. She didn’t care for cooking, never had, but it had been her lot. As a girl, she had worked in the fields and the barn with her brothers, both older, who had taken over the farming following their father’s death. But then their mother died, and the housekeeping fell to Jessie, who did it grudgingly. Fortunately for her, her brothers did not care about the food as long as it was plentiful. Nor did they remark on the disorder of the house. Jessie finished her chores quickly so that she could labor outside, doing the work of a man. Now, while other women complained about the inconvenience of cooking over a campfire, Jessie enjoyed it. The easy duty gave her more time to roam the prairie beyond the Saints’ tents.

The trip had been a lark for the young woman. She loved walking along the trail, taking her turn at the cart. The hot sun that beat down on the Saints some days and robbed them of energy felt good on her back, and the rain refreshed her. Jessie joyed to see the vast land, so wide and open, so different from the landscape of the farm, with its copses and hedgerows. She gathered bouquets of sunflowers with their brown ox-eye centers, and sometimes she picked up handfuls of dirt, smelling it and letting it sift through her fingers, wondering what crops could be planted there. “I never saw a country I liked better in my life,” she told Ephraim. “The earth is as young as a baby, while at home it was as aged as an old man.”

“You haven’t seen but one other country,” he reminded her.

She liked the sunsets most of all. They stretched across the prairie from horizon to horizon and were glorious, with rays of pink and gold against a sky the hue of Wedgwood, or else were violent—a streak the color of blood separating the black earth from the blue sky.

She wanted to stop and talk to the farmers they passed, ask them what they raised. She would have if Thales had not told them to have no truck with the local people.

The curious inhabitants came out of their houses to stare at the Saints as they passed, making fun of their awkward carts and joking with their neighbors. “It’s the Mormons. Lock up your daughters,” said one, and another called, “My ox is named Joe Smith!”

“I thought all you Mormons had gone to hell,” one man called, and Ephraim answered him gaily, “The Lord has made no such requisition.”

Several well-meaning villagers begged the Coopers to winter there, telling them that they had started out too late in the year and would run into snow before they got to the Salt Lake. “You’d better say your prayers if you keep on, Mormons,” one called. He was rebuked by Sutter, who retorted, “Your Babylon has no claim on us.”

Many of the people were friendly, and despite Thales’s warning, Jessie sometimes stopped to exchange a word with the onlookers. A woman sold her a pail of milk for a nickel. Another offered a glass of buttermilk when the Coopers stopped to repair a broken spoke. Sutter and Jessie had tied the broken ends together with a rag, intending to replace the spoke later with a tree branch, but a farmer offered a seasoned piece of wood that he said would work better. And because they knew the green wood used to build the cart was the source of their troubles, they accepted.

Thales came along then and reprimanded the two, saying, “We need no help but that which we receive from God.” The Coopers and the farmer smiled at one another, and after Thales moved on, Sutter said he considered the farmer an instrument of the Lord and the lumber a gift from God, and he placed the board in his cart.

“We have a preacher here. He, too, has the misfortune of doubling for the Almighty,” the farmer said, and they all laughed.

Jessie heard the songs of birds over the creaking of the carts, songs she could not identify, and looked for the birds that made them. She found wildflowers that grew among the prairie grasses, coarser and taller than the grasses at home, and picked up rocks that intrigued her, putting them into the cart. When it was Sutter’s turn to pull, he threw out the stones, remarking that Thales would contend the three had gone over their allotment of seventeen pounds each.

Sutter had been the one who had balked at going to America. Looking across their familiar English farm, he had said to his brother and sister, “We’ve made this the best farm for miles around. Why should we give it up?”

Jessie and Ephraim were taken with the idea of starting life in a new land among other Mormons, however, and they believed that despite their efforts, the farm was worn-out. Thales had talked as much about America as he had about religion, and Jessie was convinced the land was as rich as Eden. When their brother resisted the move, Jessie and Ephraim did not talk about Sutter’s soul or the church’s call to Zion. Instead, Ephraim asked, “You want to work this piece of land for the rest of your life? Don’t you intend for nothing more than that?”

Jessie added, “Supposing you or Ephraim should marry. You’d have to divide the farm.”

“Or Jessie,” Ephraim said. “By rights, she should have a third.”

“By rights, but not by law,” Sutter replied, correcting him.

“You’d deprive her?”

“No, I would not. I’m just pointing out the fact of it.”

“And if you had a wife, would she agree to let Jessie have a third of the land?”

“This is the sort of argument we’ll get into one day if we stay here,” Jessie said.

Their arguments made Sutter doubt the wisdom of remaining, he told his sister later on. He admitted he’d asked himself if he really wanted to repeat each day’s chores for the next thirty or forty years. One morning when he went out to slop the hogs, he came back inside to tell his sister that the thought of staring into the face of a pig for the next ten thousand days was daunting. He didn’t want to feel the chill that went into his bones each winter morning as he rose from his bed, and then, he asked Jessie, did he want to marry one of the dough-faced girls in the village and raise a brood of brats who would follow him into the fields as he had followed his father, and his father his grandfather? So he agreed with his brother and sister to go to the Salt Lake. It did not occur to any of the Coopers that life in American was likely to be as repetitious.

The Coopers gave up the farm, sold their belongings, and despite the admonitions from the elders, they did not turn the money over to the church. Instead, they purchased the seed and implements they expected to use to start farming in the valley. Like the other Saints, they had expected to take a hundred pounds of baggage apiece with them to Zion, discovering only when they reached Iowa City that they were limited to seventeen. So they went through their belongings, setting aside coats and shoes and dresses, crockery and silver, keepsakes. They ripped their parents’ silhouettes from their frame and cast aside the frame. Their books, even those on farming principles, went into the pile of discards, along with the diary that Jessie had written in since their departure from Liverpool. Other Saints, including Ephraim, considered their diaries as sacred as their Bibles and kept them even later, when the carts were lightened further. But Jessie did not want hers to add to the weight. Even at that, they had had to cast aside some of those things they had thought indispensable. Like other women, Jessie put on several layers of clothing, so the garments would not count against her on weight, and she tied the bags of seeds under her skirts so that they did not have to be left behind. “I do not believe Thales Tanner will look for them there,” she told her brothers.

“I thank God, then, that you did not marry him,” Sutter told her slyly. “You would have packed a different seed with you.”

His sister swatted Sutter for his impertinence, but she turned aside and laughed to herself.

Now Jessie was setting out the three tin plates and three forks, all that was left after the purge at Iowa City, when she looked up and saw Louisa standing beside the cart, her skirt muddy from the trail. Jessie rose and greeted her friend, glad to see her, because the two had had little time to talk on the journey, and even then, Thales had been nearby. She looked around for him, but Louisa said, “I am alone. I felt the need for a little walk.”

“After walking fifteen miles already today?” Jessie smiled.

Louisa shrugged. “Sometimes I need to be alone with my thoughts. You remember how I used to hide out by the grindstone when we were girls. Of course, Thales would be displeased if he knew I wanted to be alone. He thinks it is a sin to be idle. There are so many sins.…”

“More for women than men, I think,” Jessie said.

Louisa gave a wisp of a smile and then frowned. “Thales would not like such a joke about the church.”

“Oh, I’m not talking about the Mormon Church. The old church, too, had a preponderance of sins for women. All doctrines do that are written by men.”

“Living a righteous life is not easy, and I must learn to be obedient. How fortunate I am to have a husband who helps me.”

“Oh, bosh, Louisa. You’re as good a person as ever lived. Thales is picking at motes.”

Louisa looked stunned for a moment, then relaxed. “Thales does go on sometimes, doesn’t he? I know you think that.” Perhaps shocked that she had criticized her husband, Louisa added quickly, “But he is such a good Mormon. You would not be critical if you heard his prayers, the way he gives his testimony, admitting to God so many weaknesses. If Mormons believed in such things, Thales would beat himself with whips and wear a hair shirt. Did you know he fasts one day each week?”

Jessie did not. She also did not care. “You look tired,” she said.

“I have sad news. Sister Esther Smalls died not more than an hour ago. There will be a service after prayers. We’ve wrapped her in her counterpane, and Thales has asked some men to dig a grave. Brother Martin will conduct a service.”

Jessie took her friend’s hand. “She was so good to us. She taught even me to love poetry.”

“She was a grand teacher, oh yes. Why, did you know that she had not intended to teach at all, but when Mr. Smalls died, she had those three small children to raise, and as no one else wanted the job of teacher and she was willing to work for half the pay, she was given it. No one expected her to achieve success.”

“But she did. She taught us literature, music, philosophy, and even manners in addition to reading and ciphering. I had not planned to stay in school beyond the sixth term, but she captivated me, and I had more years of schooling than my brothers. I was pleased when she was baptized and agreed to go to Utah, although I knew she was distraught that her children did not accept the faith and that she had to embark on her own.”