True Sisters (9 page)

“You’ve a hard way of serving the Lord, by God,” the villagers called. “We’ve jobs. Wait out the winter with us.” Jessie waved and thanked them, but she was not tempted to stop.

One evening at camp, Thales Tanner told her that a cart pulled by a widow woman with five children had broken down, and that the woman had hired a man to take her back to a town the Saints had passed through earlier in the day. To Jessie’s horror, Thales thundered, “She has betrayed the covenants!” And that night at the meeting, he urged the membership to excommunicate her. The missionary was the voice of God in matters of religion, Jessie knew, but still, she would not have voted to excommunicate the convert. Jessie had met the woman, who was not an apostate at all, but only a tired widow in poor health, with a blind son and another who was lame from where the wheel of a handcart had run over his foot. The sister had told Jessie she would winter in the town, taking shelter with her rescuer, and go on in the spring with the year’s first handcart company. But Brother Thales said he would rather see her in hell than let her pollute the next year’s converts. And so the Saints had voted to remove her and her children from the church. The decision left Jessie restive. Didn’t the religion that brought her so much pleasure have room for compassion?

That day had been a long one for the Coopers, whose cart had broken down on the road. They were used to walking, but they were going farther each day now, and that was harder on the carts. At first, they’d pushed their carts only a few miles a day, but Brother Martin told them they must hurry to avoid being caught in the mountains when the snows came, and so they doubled and tripled the miles they walked, until that day, the Coopers had gone twenty miles, and without water.

Jessie saw Robert Amos change places with his wife, Maud, she pulling and he pushing. Robert refused the water they carried in the cart so that his wife could have his share, but she would not take a sip, saving her portion for him. The result was that neither drank. Instead, they placed small smooth stones in their mouths to keep down the thirst. In the late afternoon, their cart bogged down in the heavy sand, and only with the help of the Coopers did they and the young couple who pushed with them free the wheels. The task was hard on Robert, who, with failing strength, was forced to sit in the road and rest before he picked up the crosspiece again.

Then he stumbled and went down, the cart toppling and spilling its contents, the kettle that hung beneath the cart rolling across the prairie. The Coopers stopped to right the cart and pile the belongings back on top while the young couple only watched. “I’ll pull for a little,” Sutter offered, but Robert waved him off.

“If I can’t pull it myself, I have no business going to Zion. I won’t be a burden to you.”

“No burden.”

“There’s no sin in accepting help,” Maud told her husband.

Robert shook his head. “I’ll just rest a minute and be as good as new.”

“Then I’ll pull with your wife, for I would talk to a woman instead of my brothers,” Jessie said. “You should ride on the wagon tomorrow,” she told Robert, who limped along beside her. He was an old man, his beard nearly all white, the skin on his face loose, and he was bony, his elbows sharp points, like the wings of a plucked chicken.

Maud looked at him fondly, saying, “My old fellow. We’ve got this far.” They were close to the encampment now, because they heard the cornet, and they hurried along, parking the Amos cart beside that of the Coopers. The couple went off to join friends.

While the women unpacked the supper things, the men examined the carts. “The axle does poorly. I believe it was harmed when the cart tipped,” Robert said.

“My brothers—” Jessie began, but Robert waved her away and went off to borrow a tool to fix it.

The two women bent over their campfires, but just then, Brother Thales passed by and admonished them. “Did you not hear the call to prayers, Sisters?” So with Ephraim and Sutter, the women left their suppers and followed the missionary to the gathering. “At least your husband won’t have to attend,” Jessie whispered.

When they returned to their campfires, they found Robert working on the cart, which was lying on its side. “I was caught up in prayers, and afterward, there was preaching,” Maud explained.

“And before you could start supper.”

“Nay, it’s in the kettle.”

“The kettle’s empty, ’twas empty when I returned.”

Jessie gave a sad smile. She’d seen the scone Maud had made with a few berries and a little sugar; her mouth had watered over it, because the Coopers’ supper was likely to be a burned pancake. Perhaps Robert had eaten it, then, abashed, denied the supper had been there.

Maud went to the fire and lifted the lid from the kettle, and indeed, it was empty of the scone. “I used the last of the sugar.” The old woman sighed. “Someone’s taken it. I hope whoever they are, they were hungrier than we. There’s not the time to cook a new pone.”

“You’ll share our meal, such as it is,” Jessie said.

“Nay, we’ve chokecherries.”

“With no sugar?” the young woman asked. She reached into her cart and put a spoonful of sugar into a tin cup and handed it to Maud.

“Bless you, Sister,” the old woman said. The couple ate the cherries, spitting out the stones, then spread their blankets on the ground, because it was too hot to sleep in a tent.

“I’ll be a minute. I must finish the cart. I’ll use the last of the tallow we bought to put on the axle, unless you want to save it to eat,” Robert said.

“Use it,” his wife said. She knew that the axles were made of wood, not metal, and grated in their wooden sockets without something to grease them. But the tallow used for grease collected dirt and pebbles, and they sanded away the wood as the cart moved along. Robert spread the tallow onto the wood with a palsied hand.

Jessie went to sleep to the sound of the old man’s humming and woke at dawn, when she heard Maud mutter, “Is it made good now?”

The young woman sat up and watched as Maud reached for her husband, who was sitting upright, leaning against the cart wheel, as if he’d fallen asleep while working on the axle. Maud grasped Robert’s lumpy fingers, and then she began to wail. There was a stirring among the sleeping Saints. One called out, “Hush,” but Jessie crept to where Maud sat and asked, “What is it, Sister?”

“My husband’s dead,” she whispered. “He died in the night. He’s gone. I didn’t have the chance to say good-bye.”

Jessie put her arms around Maud and tried to raise her, but Maud would not be moved. “A minute,” she said, staring at her husband’s face as if she were trying to memorize his features.

“I’ll fetch my brothers. They’ll dig a grave.”

Maud didn’t reply. Instead, she leaned over Robert’s body and whispered, “You were a good husband, the best that ever was. I was blessed.” As if her mind were muddled, she muttered gibberish, words of love and sorrow. Then at last, she asked, “What’s to become of your old Maudie? How will I get to Zion without you?” She sobbed quietly, her shoulders shaking in her grief.

“We’ll assign you to another cart. You will make it safely to the valley, Sister Maud.”

Jessie had been about comforting the old woman, and now, hearing these words, she looked up and found herself staring into the face of Thales Tanner, who took Maud by the arms and lifted her. Jessie stared at him darkly, waiting for him to tell the widow that Robert had died for lack of faith, but instead, the missionary said, “He was an honorable man, a good Saint. He is with the Lord our God, waiting for you, but you won’t join him just yet,” and he smiled at her. “I prophesy that you will reach Zion and live a goodly life there for years to come.”

“It’s best I stay with him. I would not want him to be cold,” Maud said.

But Thales led her away. “I believe he would want you to reach Zion, would he not?”

Maud pondered the question, then nodded. Thales told her to collect her belongings while the Coopers wrapped Robert’s body in a blanket. When Maud had selected her few things, she distributed Robert’s clothing—his coat to a boy who had none, his hat to a man whose own had been blown across the prairie. She put aside the clock, a fine clock with the face of the moon on it. “What reason do I have to count time now?” she asked Jessie. “Time will go on without me,” and she gave the clock to a woman who had admired it. The couple the Amoses had traveled with claimed the cart.

Then there was a hasty service, for the departure of the carts could not be delayed. Thales read from the Bible and asked the Lord to accept the soul of His faithful servant Robert, who had labored hard and was used up. He did not blame Robert’s death on weak faith, and for that, Jessie was grateful.

After the service was finished and the men had shoveled the dirt over the body of the dead man, Jessie brought Maud a cup of porridge and told her to eat, because they had many miles to travel that day. So Maud accepted the cup and ate the contents, and when she was finished, she saw that Sutter and Ephraim had piled her things onto the Cooper cart.

Maud looked at the three young people, two strong men and a sister nearly as tough as they were, and said they did not need to take on the care of an old woman. She told them she could go along on her own, but Jessie Cooper put her arm around Maud’s shoulders and said, “I’ve had it gruff from my brothers. I’ve a cousin in the valley. I wrote to her that we were coming. But until then, I could use a bit of company from another woman.”

“I don’t want to be a burden. I’d like to be serviceable to you.”

“You will be. I tell you truly, I am no cook, never was. I saw the supper you fixed last night with nothing more than flour and water and a handful of berries. If you’ll agree to do the cooking, I’ll take your turn at the cart, and we’ll both call it a good bargain.”

“There’s nothing I like so well as cooking,” Maud said, turning to Jessie with damp eyes.

“Now, now. We’ll have no tears,” Jessie said. “You’ll set me to weeping, too, and my brothers won’t stand for a crying woman.”

“Then neither of us shall do it.” Maud then added, “Unless, of course, we can use the tears to have our way.”

Jessie laughed, a deep laugh like a man’s. “Sister Maud, I believe we have come to an understanding.”

Chapter 3

August 23, 1856

After four weeks of pushing their handcarts across the prairie, Nannie, Ella, Andrew, and the rest of the Martin Company passed Council Bluffs and camped at Florence, the settlement that Brigham Young had once called Winter Quarters. Bone-tired, they pulled their carts into the encampment, grateful for a few days to rest, mend the broken vehicles, and replenish supplies. Andrew was anxious to move on, but his wife and her sister were thankful for a day or two of respite, glad for a time to bake pies and cakes and bread, to spend their hoarded pennies on precious amounts of cinnamon and clove that were available from the merchants, to kneel with other women on the riverbank as they washed clothes or sit a moment and gossip over their mending before the long push—a thousand miles more—to the valley.

“Sit ye, lass,” Nannie Macintosh told her sister, Ella Buck, after they had unloaded the cart and sorted through their belongings to see what garments needed washing, which mending—everything, it seemed. “I’ll scrub the clothes. When ye are rested, ye can bake the cake, a lovely cake with eggs and butter. We’ll not have another till we reach the valley.” They had bought the makings for the delicacy from a farmer who had come into the camp with a wagon loaded with produce and dairy products, an abundance the Saints had not seen since leaving Iowa City. Few had money for purchases, however.

Before Nannie picked up the dirty clothes, she helped Ella to the ground so that her sister could rest in the shade of a blanket that Andrew had stretched over tree limbs above their cart. The leaves of the tree quivered in the late-summer breeze. Ella reached out her arm, studying the pattern of sunlight that came through the leaves onto her skin, hoped Utah would have trees and meadows, grasses dark with dew in the morning, and wild roses. But of course it would. After all, they were going to the Salt Lake
Valley.
There might even be heather, Ella thought as she watched her sister walk away, wondering how she could have coped with both the trek and her pregnancy without Nannie. It had been a blessed thing that both of them had left the hard old religion that taught man was sinful and joined the Mormon Church, with its promise of eternal life. Ella stretched her legs and noticed that her slim ankles, of which she’d once been proud, were swollen, either from the walk or her condition—she wasn’t sure which. She sighed and leaned back against the cart, and for a moment, she indulged herself in being bone-idle.

“I wish I could sit like that.”

Well, of course, some self-righteous sister just had to come along to scold her for her indolence! There always seemed to be those who liked nothing better than finding shortcomings in their fellow Saints. But when Ella looked up, she saw Sister Anne, that strange, angry woman who had come to America with her husband even though she wasn’t a Mormon. Ella remembered shouting “We’re off” to her the day they began their journey in Iowa City.

“Then why don’t ye?” Ella retorted, refusing to let the heretic make her feel guilty. Then she remembered that Anne had lost her daughter on the ship, and she softened, but only a little.

Anne studied Ella a moment, then replied, “No reason I know of, Mrs. Buck,” and dropped heavily to the ground, setting Lucy, her little daughter, in her lap.

Anne’s pregnancy was more advanced than Ella’s, and with a family—Ella had seen her with a little boy, too—she undoubtedly needed rest. Still, Ella was not altogether pleased that the woman had joined her. She had hoped to have a little time to herself, something that was rare among the hundreds of emigrants. Nonetheless, she said, “I believe the Lord will forgive ye and me resting here, if it’s not for more than few minutes and we don’t get to blethering.”

“He would indeed suffer such indolence if
He
were a woman, I think. Have you ever thought we would not have to endure pregnancy if God were a woman?”