Pillar of Light

by Gerald N. Lund

  She stepped up beside him and leaned forward slightly. “Oh, Joshua,” she breathed. “They’re beautiful.”

  “Yes.” He was deeply pleased. It was right that the deer should be here again, and somehow that would make it easier for him.

  “It really is a lovely place. No wonder Elder Pratt felt inspired to call it Mount Pisgah.”

  Joshua nodded. “In a way, it’s going to be hard to leave here. This wouldn’t be a bad place to put down your roots.”

  “Thank you for bringing me here.” She turned to him and went up on her toes and kissed him softly. “It’s so good to be back together again.”

  He kissed her back, marveling at how totally fulfilled he felt to have her beside him. “I guess I’m getting old or something, but I don’t like being away from you anymore.”

  “Anymore?” she teased. “You mean you once did?”

  “You know what I mean. When I used to go out on the trail or down to St. Louis or Savannah, I always missed you, but it was nothing like this. I have lain awake every night, thinking about you and the children. I don’t like being apart.”

  “Neither do I. I never sleep well when you’re not there.”

  He took her hand. “Move slowly, and I think we won’t spook them.” He pushed carefully through the branches and stepped slowly out into the clearing. The four deer jerked up, ears forward, one leg lifted ready for flight. The biggest doe, and therefore probably the wisest, took a step or two toward the trees. “Easy now,” he said in a low voice. He brought Caroline through very slowly; then they stood motionless.

  The deer were like statues, brown stone in a meadow of green. Finally the lead doe flicked her tail. The ears moved back again as she relaxed. “Sit down real slow,” Joshua whispered. They sank to the thick grass, and again stayed motionless. After another full minute the big doe turned back to the willows. There was no threat here. Taking their signal from her, the others returned to eating as well.

  “This is so beautiful, Joshua,” Caroline murmured.

  He took a quick breath, not looking at her. “There’s something I need to talk with you about, Caroline.”

  She looked at him closely. “Is that why Nathan insisted on keeping the children with them?”

  There was a soft laugh. “I suppose.” By suppertime Joshua had decided he needed to tell Caroline everything, but he said nothing to Nathan about his decision. When the meal was finished and the dishes washed and put away, he casually mentioned that he might take Caroline for a walk down by the river. Instantly the children clamored to accompany them, but Nathan stepped in and gently but firmly suggested that their children stay with his children and play. Did he sense that Joshua had made his decision or was it just plain hope? Joshua wasn’t sure, but either way he was grateful. This was not a time for children.

  “So,” she said. “What is it?”

  He had rehearsed it in his mind a dozen times while they walked, trying to choose the best opening, the most appropriate words. Now they all fled. “I’ve thought about telling you sooner, but I was afraid that you might make more of it than what it is.”

  She was mystified. “Make more of what, Joshua?”

  And so he told her. At first he was hesitant, almost stumbling as he told her about the day he had taken Lydia’s Book of Mormon. As she gaped at him in utter amazement, he rushed on, the words tumbling out. He told her about reading it from time to time, about telling Lydia on the morning of their departure, of swearing her to secrecy, especially when it came to telling Caroline.

  Caroline was not looking at him now. The initial amazement and joy had turned to hurt. He reached out and took her hands. “I know not telling you was wrong, but can’t you see why, Caroline? I know how much my being a member of the Church would mean to you. I was afraid that you would just be disappointed.”

  “Disappointed?” she cried, her eyes glistening now. “How could you ever think that?”

  “Not disappointed in what I was doing. Disappointed when nothing came of it. Even now I can see it in your eyes. You’re so amazed, so pleased that at last I’m doing something. But that’s all I’m doing, Caroline. I’m reading. I’m asking questions. I’m not ready to join the Church. I have too many things that don’t make sense to me. And if it comes out that I decide I don’t want to be a Mormon, are you telling me you won’t be terribly disappointed?”

  She started a retort, but then stopped. It was a fair question. “Well, I . . . Of course I would be disappointed.”

  “I just thought it would be easier if you didn’t know for a time. I’m not saying that it was right, but that was my feeling.”

  And then Caroline realized what she was doing. She was doing the very thing he had been afraid of. She squeezed his hands and smiled at him. “I understand. It’s all right.” She had to stop as tears instantly filled her eyes and her words choked off. “What matters is that you have decided to search, Joshua. I am so happy that you would do that. And if nothing comes of it . . .” She sniffed back the tears. “Well, I will always love you for being willing to ask.”

  Greatly relieved, he went on. He told her of shooting the deer, of the sudden strange feelings about life and death. When he told her how he had realized that he had been whistling Olivia’s song to himself and the impact it had on him—enough to drive him to his knees—she looked at him strangely, tears welling up again to trickle down her cheeks.

  “Did you know that Savannah sings that all the time now?” she asked.

  “She does?”

  “All the time I hear her humming it or singing it softly to herself.”

  “Well, it is a haunting melody. Once it starts with me, I can’t get it out of my head. Anyway,” he said, coming back to his experience, “it wasn’t much, I suppose, when you think of all the questions I have, but after that prayer, at least I knew that Olivia wasn’t gone. And I knew that Papa still lives.”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “Oh, yes, Joshua. That’s the most important thing.” She moved closer to him and he put an arm around her. She snuggled against him, feeling as though she would burst with joy.

  “I told Nathan on the way here.” He laughed shortly. “He was as shocked as you. Since then we’ve talked a lot. He’s been trying to answer my questions.”

  “Joshua, there’s something you need to know.”

  “What?”

  “Well, you know that Savannah prays every night and morning that you will join the Church.”

  He pulled her in a little more tightly to him. “I suspect she’s not the only one in our family who does.”

  She flashed him a warm smile. “I think you would be surprised to know how many of us do.”

  He was surprised. “Who else besides you and Savannah? And Mother, of course.”

  “Keep going.”

  “Well, Lydia and Nathan probably.”

  “And Derek and Rebecca, and Jessica and Solomon, and Jenny and Matthew, and Rachel and Emily and Josh.”

  “Rachel?” he said, stopping her. “How do you know that?”

  “Emily told me. She said she and Rachel and Josh made a promise to each other that they would pray for you every night.”

  Joshua suddenly felt a lump in his throat. He found that not only astounding but deeply moving.

  “Anyway,” Caroline went on, “Savannah never forgets. She is determined that you must become a member before we reach the Rocky Mountains. You know how determined she can be, even at nine years old.”

  He smiled, remembering the day she had hidden herself when he refused to let her be baptized. They had not found her until the whole family was in a panic. “Yes, I do know that.”

  “Are you going to say anything to her about all this?”

  He shook his head immediately. “No, nor to anyone else. Not for now.” He saw her look and went on quickly. “You know what it will be, Caroline. Everyone asking me every day how things are going, watching me like I was a bug on a rock. I don’t want that. Not yet.”

  Befor
e she could protest further, he straightened and looked around. The sun was fully down now and twilight was closing swiftly. The deer had gone sometime during their conversation and they had the river and meadow to themselves. He turned back to Caroline, who was watching him. Her eyes were soft and filled with love and joy. He bent down and kissed her again. She put her arms around his neck and kissed him back. It was a long, lingering kiss, and one that said much.

  When she finally pulled back, she seemed a little breathless. She smiled. “Joshua?”

  “Yes?”

  “You know that your joining the Church would make me very happy.”

  He frowned. “Yes.”

  “But do you also know that you don’t have to join to make me love you?”

  He reached out with his finger, tracing a line down her nose and then onto her lips. His voice was filled with wonder. “I know. I find that hard to believe, but yes, I know.”

  “Good.” She stood up and pulled him up to face her. “Then don’t you do it for me. You do it only for yourself, because you don’t have to do anything to prove your love for me.”

  Solomon and Jessica were working in the garden plot behind the log cabin in Garden Grove. The structure had actually been built for someone else and then assigned to them to live in for the few days before they started west again. They would never see the harvest, but then they had never thought they were planting for themselves.

  For the moment they were alone. Rachel and Luke had gone on with Lydia’s family to Mount Pisgah. Eleven-year-old Mark, much to his complete delight, had been asked by one of the brethren to accompany a small hunting party. It would be only for the day, but when Solomon let him take the rifle, it was as if he visibly grew a full foot right on the spot.

  John, the only child born of Jessica’s marriage to her second husband, John Griffith, was down with the cabin construction crews. He was only eight, but the building of the cabins fascinated him. He would fetch tools or hold plumb lines or clean up the piles of wood chips. Normally that was where Solomon would have been too, but by rotating assignment the men were asked to stay at home and plant gardens so that there would be fresh vegetables in the coming months. And today was his day. The men insisted that Solomon let young John come anyway. So Solomon and Jessica were left with only Miriam and little Solomon. Miriam was in the shade of the cabin, playing with the baby in his small rocking crib.

  Solomon stopped for a moment and let his eyes sweep across the little village that was springing into existence virtually as they watched. It was something that filled him with satisfaction. Solomon, though a teacher by profession, had always been a man of the soil. He found a deep enjoyment in working with his hands and seeing something erected where nothing had been before, or seeing ripened crops waving gently in an afternoon breeze where before there had been only unbroken prairie.

  It had been just over a month ago that Brigham Young determined to make Garden Grove the first of a series of semipermanent way stations along the way. Since that time, with the fifty or so men that Brigham had left, and the new ones coming in, they had cleared, plowed, and planted over five hundred acres. They had put in wheat and corn and rye and barley. They had acres of potatoes, squash, beans, and cucumbers. A hundred garden plots were already sprouting radishes, onions, peas, carrots, beets, and tomatoes. They had cut an estimated ten thousand rails for fencing—a staggering number when you thought about what work that entailed. They had enough logs cut for forty more houses in addition to the dozen or so that were already completed. His and Jessica’s work here was nearly done, but when he left, it would be with a satisfied heart. There would be many people, especially those who were poor, who would reap the fruits of Solomon and Jessica’s labors.

  He looked back to where Jessica was bent over, dropping the kernels of sweet corn in small hills she had formed with the hoe. Solomon was putting the entire upper northwest corner of the garden into hills of red potatoes. He had carefully cut up each potato so there were two “eyes” on each piece. From them would come the shoots that would grow into the deep green clusters that signaled a healthy potato hill.

  About half a mile away a line of wagons came out of the trees and started toward them. It was a common sight, with dozens arriving almost every day now. But the sight of them always stirred him a little, and he stopped and leaned on his shovel, watching their slow progress. He wondered how many would stop here and how many would go on. He also wondered how long it would be before the presidency of the settlement said to him, “It is enough, Brother Solomon. You may continue on and join your family now.” But such speculation was pointless. When it was time they would go. Until then they would try to do their part. With that, he straightened and went back to his digging.

  It was five minutes later, as the wagons began passing them on the nearby road, that Jessica straightened and lifted a hand to shade her eyes. “Is that Mark?” she asked.

  Solomon scanned the group of wagons, then nodded in surprise. About halfway back in the group there was Mark, rifle over his shoulder, striding along with some other men. Even as Solomon spotted him, he saw them and waved. He said something to the men, then broke off and trotted up and around the fence and then directly toward them.

  When he reached them, Solomon spoke. “You’re back early. No luck?”

  Mark set the rifle down carefully against the rail fence and leaned against it. “They shot two deer. I shot at a squirrel”—there was a look of disgust—“but I missed him clean.”

  “Well, maybe some other—”

  “Pa,” he cut in, “there’s news.”

  “Oh?”

  “What?” Jessica said, coming over to join them now.

  “We’re at war with Mexico.”

  For a moment, that didn’t register. “Who’s at war with Mexico?” he asked.

  “The United States. Those people just coming in said it’s all over the papers back home. President Polk has declared war against Mexico. He’s calling for troops to march to Texas and drive the Mexicans out.”

  Jessica turned to Solomon, her mouth twisting a little at the corners with anxiety. “Isn’t where we are going supposed to be part of Mexico?” she asked.

  Mark’s eyes widened perceptibly. “Are we going to war, Papa?”

  “No, no, nothing like that.”

  “So what does it mean, Solomon?” Jessica asked.

  “Well, the United States drove us out,” he said after a moment, still considering the implications of the news. “Maybe Mexico will be glad to take us in.”

  Peter Ingalls stood beneath the huge oak tree, hat in hand, feeling the hot south wind pull at his hair and parch his face. No wonder the locals called it Kansas, he thought. Technically, this was somewhere between Indian Territory and that vast tract of land noted on the maps as “Unclaimed Territory.” Indian Territory was that portion of land beyond the western borders of the United States that the U.S. government had designated for resettlement of the various eastern Indian tribes back in 1825. Over thirty tribes had eventually been brought here. It was a bewildering roll call of names—Chippewa, Omaha, Delaware, Fox, Iowa, Kickapoo, Ottawa, Shawnee, Sauk, Wyandot. They had all come to occupy the lands of the Kansa, or Kaw, tribe, who were native to the area. Someone in Independence had told Peter that the word Kansa meant “people of the south wind.” After a week of moving across their territory, he believed it.

  He turned his head, looking westward across the vast sea of sunflowers that bobbed in the wind like children playing “Mother, May I.” He could see the faint line of trees that marked the winding Big Blue River and the circle of wagons waiting to cross the swollen stream. They had been stalled here for three days while they waited for the water to go down and the men constructed a ferry to take them across. They couldn’t afford to delay much longer.

  Peter felt momentary guilt. Was he more concerned about moving on than he was about old Mrs. Keyes? But then he shook it off. No. He was truly sorry to see Mrs. Reed’s mother die. She had al
ways been wonderful to him and Kathryn, and her passing would leave a void in the company. Patty, the Reeds’ eight-year-old daughter, was especially devastated. She had been very close to her grandmother and had a deep fear that the Indians would dig up her body. But Peter also knew that the past few days had been one long agony for Mrs. Keyes, every jolt of the wagon adding to her growing pain and draining the last of her reserves. It was a blessing that she had finally succumbed early this morning.

  He looked around. Mr. Reed had chosen the site for the burial of his mother-in-law well. They had dug the grave at the foot of a large upland burr oak tree near the bank of a small creek. This morning Baylis Williams, another of Mr. Reed’s hired men, carved an inscription in its bark, and thus the tree also became the headboard. Once the services were over and the grave filled in again, they cut sod and laid over it. They also placed a stone at one end, which read simply, “Mrs. Sarah Keyes, Died May 29, 1846: Aged 70.” The children gathered huge clusters of sunflowers to lay at their grandmother’s last resting place. Kathryn, who due to her handicap rode in the wagon with Mrs. Keyes every day and who had grown quite close to her, had asked Peter to dig up some wildflowers and replant them around the tree. Reed had even found some young cedar trees somewhere and had them replanted nearby as well.

  But now it was over. The company had returned to camp, about a mile away. Even the rest of their immediate party—the two Donner brothers and their wives, Baylis and his half sister, Eliza, some of the other hired help—had gone back, the men talking about needing to continue their work on the ferry. James Reed caught Peter’s eye and nodded. He had seen Peter looking toward the river. He knew exactly what he was thinking and he agreed. This had been their first death and it cast a pall over the whole train. But everyone knew it wouldn’t be the last. On the trail, death was part of life. On the trail, grief was expected and honored, but it was not waited on. There was work to do.

  Reed turned to his wife. “Margret, we have to go.”

  She straightened slowly, her eyes red, her face haggard and drawn. When they had started from Springfield, Mrs. Reed had not been in wonderful health herself, but she had thrived on the regimen of the trek. Now the death of her mother had set her back visibly. She leaned heavily on his arm as they started back toward the wagon.