True Sisters (8 page)

“I’d thought she would teach my children, just as she taught you and me at home,” Louisa said.

Without thinking, Jessie glanced down at her friend’s stomach, but Louisa shook her head. “How did she die?” Jessie asked. She had seen the woman on the trail, pushing a handcart with a young couple, but had not talked with her.

“She died praising God,” Louisa replied.

“Yes, of course, but what was the cause?”

“She caught a cold. It went into her chest and turned into pneumonia. After they reached camp this evening, she begged to sit down for a few minutes, and when the others went to fetch her, she was in a delirium.” Louisa looked away. “Thales says it was a lack of faith.”

“How could he! The idea!” Jessie was indignant. “What does faith have to do with catching a cold?”

Louisa shrugged. “Thales says if our belief is strong enough, we will make it. God does not want to take into His kingdom those who question their faith.”

“Mrs. Smalls was as strong a believer as you and I,” Jessie said.

“Perhaps in her heart she was not.”

“Perhaps, but not likely.”

Louisa looked away. “I wanted to tell you. I know you loved her.”

“Yes, I did.” And I do not love Thales Tanner, Jessie thought. She watched her friend turn and walk back toward her own cart, wondering what would happen if Louisa fell sick. What would Thales say about her then?

She squatted down next to the fire, where the dinner was already burned. It wasn’t the first time.

*   *   *

Prayers were over by the time Robert and Maud Amos reached the camp. In the darkening light, Maud looked at her old fellow. They were too aged to make the trip. They’d both known that. They’d had no children to tell them nay but plenty of neighbors to call them fools. Their friends of long years had questioned Maud and Robert’s sanity in selling their few possessions and starting off on the long ocean voyage to America. And not even to a big city such as New York, but to a place nobody had ever heard of before the Mormons came into the Midlands village with their preaching—a valley in the far west of America without even the barest of creature comforts.

“In the going down of your years, Mrs. Amos! You ought to spend them on your settle in the chimney corner, toasting yourself by the fire,” the cottager on the east side of her house told her. “And with Mr. Amos. The shame of it!”

“Lordy, Maud, if the wolves don’t get you, the wild Indians will. And where will you be buried? Do they even have cemeteries in that country?” the neighbor to the west asked.

“I expect so, unless Americans live forever, and in that case, we would fare right well,” Maud replied.

“You’re not much in the habit of traveling, I think. I’ve seen you walk down to the market, and you couldn’t any more walk across America than you could fly over it. And pushing a wheelbarrow, too! You’ve took leave of your senses.”

“A cart, not a wheelbarrow. And we’re as sensible as we’ve always been,” Maud insisted, although she and Robert wondered themselves how they could walk a thousand miles or more. In fact, they had asked the missionary that very question, and he had replied that if their faith was strong, the Lord would give them strength. And their faith was indeed strong.

The old couple had been good members of the Church of England before they met the missionaries, and at first, they were not inclined to pay attention to the doctrine from America. But they were kind people, and out of courtesy to the nice young men who called on them, they listened to the message about the Mormon Church and agreed to attend a service. The preacher wasn’t as good as Thales Tanner, whom they met later in Iowa City, but nonetheless, they were caught up in his zeal. After the service, Maud told her husband that a heat like a coal fire had gone into her heart when she heard the brother speak, and Robert replied that he’d heard angels singing and a light had seemed to shine on the missionary, although they were crowded into a dark room with others, where only a lamp and the glare of the fire in the grate lighted the room. Could it be that at their age they were being called by the Lord?

Maud and her husband pondered the message of the Mormons and studied their book. Their pastor, a man almost as old as they were, told them that Satan had taken hold of them and was tempting them, that their souls would be lost if they embraced the Mormon faith. Why, he himself would hold open the door to hell for them if they joined the upstart church, he told Maud. “You would bring disgrace to your family name for joining such a cursed religion. You would be the devil’s odd man.”

The couple was wounded at that, because the minister had been their friend for many years, and they’d hoped they could trust him to counsel them. The two gave it time, because they did not want to be wrong and because one of them would not join the church without the other. They were always of one heart. But in the end, they would not deny that the Lord had spoken to them, and they were baptized.

They were faithful converts, donating their time to the church, welcoming elders into their home, tithing, for the church demanded much. It never occurred to them that they would ever be called to Zion, and at first, they demurred. “Our age,” Maud said.

But the missionary would not be put off and insisted that if they sold their few belongings, they would have enough to pay for passage to America and a cart that they could push to Zion. “Others even older than you are going, and they have put their trust in the Lord. I had thought you firmer in the faith.”

They talked it over then, for one never made a decision without first hearing from the other. The two were closer than most couples, perhaps because they shared the tragedy of five little children who had not lived to grow up. The couple was poor and hardworking, Robert still laboring in a carpentry shop, and they often worried what would happen to them if he became too infirm to work.

“We’ve never taken an adventure,” Robert said one evening as they sat in their worn chairs in front of the hearth.

“What if we fall into sickness?”

“You heard the missionary. We must have faith.”

“Faith may give us strength, but it won’t help if you break your leg.”

“And what if I do?” he asked. “What if I die out there? I won’t be any more dead there than I would be here. Besides, there’s a chance we’ll make it all the way, and wouldn’t that be something?”

“A fire to go burns inside of me,” Maud said.

Robert took her worn hand, the skin dry and thin as paper. “Me, too. Old girl, we’ll do it.”

And so they boarded the ship at Liverpool and made it safely across the ocean. The fresh sea air cleansed the vapors from their systems, and they arrived in Boston feeling younger than their years. Then there had been the trip by train across the land, a journey that filled Maud with awe at the vastness of the country she would call home.

And finally came their arrival at Iowa City, the disappointment that they would have to wait weeks to embark, although they were cheerful and put the time to good use. Robert was skilled with his hands and helped manufacture the carts. Maud knew that if he had been by himself, he would not have been so selfish as to put extra work into his own cart, but he feared she would not have the strength to push, so he selected for himself one of the better-made vehicles, constructed with wood that was a little aged, and he made sure that the wheels and hubs were well made. “I would have bought iron hubs if I could have, but none are available, so I made them out of the hardest wood I could find,” he told his wife. Still, he added, he did not know if they would last the trip.

While Robert worked on the carts, Maud made the rounds of the camp, tending children, sharing herbs for cooking and medicinal use, herbs she had grown at home, dried and bundled for the trip. She’d brought along seeds to plant in the valley, had stitched bags from scraps of fabric to store them. And since Maud was known to be a midwife, she’d been sought out to help deliver a baby in camp. Looking at the young women among the converts, she knew she’d be called upon again and again before the journey was over. The idea made her glow. She loved babies. It was a heavy burden for her that she had failed Robert in that way. But he had never complained. “We have each other. I couldn’t wish for more,” he told her often enough.

Now she glanced at her husband of so many years as he trudged off into the darkness to find wood for the cooking fire. Sometimes, they picked up a few sticks on the way, but the extra wood made the cart more difficult to push, and so they waited until they reached camp to look for fallen branches. By then, however, the area had been scoured by others, since the old people were among the last to arrive.

On that day, they were even later than usual, because they had stopped to pick gooseberries that Maud had spotted just off the trail. The gooseberries, along with wild plums, varied their diet. Maud took out the kettle and frying pan and foodstuffs and mixed up a pancake, folding in the tiny sour berries. They would have the scone with bacon. She ought to prepare more. Robert deserved better. But she was too tired, and besides, by the time they set up their campsite, both of them were almost too exhausted to eat. She hoped that when they reached the mountains, they could ride in a wagon. Or maybe a party from the valley would meet them this side of the mountains and carry them to Zion. Maud would like that.

While she waited for Robert, Maud made a fire with the sticks from the cart and set the kettle on top of it. The cake wouldn’t bake through without more wood, but she could get it started. She sat down next to the fire, but before she could settle in, a woman touched her arm. “Sister Maud, my baby’s sick. It would be a blessing if you’d take a look at her.”

Maud smiled and rose stiffly. A baby, now that was reason enough to shake off the day’s tiredness. She looked down at the dinner. The fire would die out before the pancake burned. If Robert returned before she did, he’d tend the fire, knowing she’d left for a reason. Maud followed the young woman across the camp, hearing the baby squalling before she saw him.

“I asked Sister Sharon for advice,” the young woman said. “She told me it is nothing, but he’s my first, and I’m afraid…” The woman’s voice trailed off.

“Of course, you’re scared. Who wouldn’t be, out here with no doctor, no chemist. I would be myself.” They reached the campsite, and Maud took the baby from the father, cooed and swayed a little with the child in her arms. She touched his forehead and examined the little body, then ran her finger inside the baby’s mouth. As the boy’s cries tapered off, Maud handed him to the mother, smiling a little. “He’s teething. If you’ll dip your finger in a little whiskey or wine and run it along the gums, that ought to settle him down.”

“Whiskey?” the father asked. “No one in this place has spirits.”

Maud cocked her head. “I expect many have it for medicinal needs. If you’ll inquire of your neighbors, I believe the Lord may produce it for you.”

“What do we owe you, Sister?” he asked.

“Not a thing, but if you find the whiskey, you might give my old fellow a tot.” She turned and walked back to her campfire, anxious to find her husband and thinking a jolt of spirits would be a good thing for Robert.

*   *   *

Jessie and her brothers were nearly three weeks out of Iowa City, and they were seasoned. They, like the other Saints, were hardened by the heat that rose to more than a hundred degrees in the daytime and turned the tents into ovens at night. They waded through dust that came to the tops of their shoes, dust so thick, blowing into their skin and eyes, the pockets and seams of their clothing, that sometimes they could see only a few feet in front of them. Their skin was burned by the sun, peeled, and was burned again. When they weren’t tormented by the sun and the flies and mosquitoes, they were chilled by cold rains that washed over them as they trudged along, the rain mixing with the dust in their hair and skin and turning it into mud. Instead of blisters, calluses now covered their feet.

The three were glad they had chosen to sleep in the open instead of being crowded into tents with strangers who snored and coughed and cried out in the night. Their stomachs had adjusted to bad water and to the food, which was either raw or scorched, doughy loaves leavened without saleratus and salt pork rancid from the heat. They had come to see it all as their due, as the Lord’s way of trying them, of separating the chaff of unworthiness from the wheat of godliness.

They heard some muttering, of course—about the hard weather, the poorly constructed carts, the quality of the food, many asking where the provisions were that the church had promised along the route. One woman asked Jessie who had concocted the foolish handcart scheme—perhaps it was the devil himself—but she was silenced by Jessie’s reply that Brigham Young had ordained it.

At the meetings Jessie and her brothers attended, they listened to the elders admonish the people, telling them that the Lord demanded a happy countenance in times of trouble, declaring theirs was an easy journey compared to that of the Saints who had been driven out of Nauvoo to live in cold misery in Winter Quarters. “You are soft. You are grumblers,” Thales Tanner said, looking at Jessie, although neither she nor Sutter nor Ephraim had voiced a complaint. “We’ll have no critics of Brother Brigham.” Then he told the gathering, “If this complaining don’t cease, sickness will get into your midst, and you will die off like rotten sheep. I counsel you to be humble and keep united so that the blessings of the Lord will attend you.”

At that, someone began singing their anthem, “The Handcart Song.”

Some must push and some must pull

As we go marching up the hill.

As merrily on the way we go

Until we reach the valley, oh.

And so the Coopers and the rest of the Saints marched on through Iowa with new conviction, for weren’t they God’s chosen people? And a people of joy, for at night when prayers were done, there was singing and laughter, and Jessie loved that. Men played fiddles and blew horns, and some danced jigs. There were even jokes, for the Mormon religion was a happy one. Singing might appeal to Jessie, who had a strong, if not melodious, voice, but she knew it did not dissuade all the converts from dropping out, and occasionally when the Martin Company passed through a settlement, she saw another handcart stop and not continue.