by Dean Hughes
“You can get by in this old cabin for a time. But before snow flies, there’s plenty to ‘fix up,’ as people say here. If you can purchase yourself a lot and start felling trees—or buy timber—folks will help you raise a good log house. That’s what they did for us.”
“It’s that ‘purchase’ part I cannot manage just yet,” Brother Johns said. “This shanty will have to do until I find work and can save some money.”
Will nodded. He was still holding the brim of his cap in one hand. He wiped his face again. “I’ll tell you what. If you want to help me tend to this garden, we can share what comes of it. That will help you get through the winter. And Sister Johns, if you can learn to make cornbread—and even more, if you can learn to eat the stuff—I’ll turn this stand of maize over to you. I’m raising a fair crop at the Big Field outside town. I’ll have enough to grind for our own needs.”
Sister Johns nodded, but she looked so weary, Will wondered whether she had heard what he had said.
“I wish we’d ha’ come when you come,” Brother Johns said. “Brother Griggs was tellin’ me ’bout that farm. He says ever’one can plant there, if they like. But I know nothin’ ’bout farmin’ at all. I been a coal miner since I was a lad, nine years old.”
“I can help a little, Brother Johns. I can plow some ground for you out there so it will be ready to plant next year.”
Brother Griggs said, “Will bought hisself four yoke o’ oxen. He plows ground for people who wants to open up them prairie lands.”
“Six teams, now,” Will said. “I had to buy two more. That heavy grass wears down oxen faster than I ever would ha’ thought. I plow with three teams and change off, or sometimes use six yoke, all together.”
“How much do you charge for that, Brother Lewis?” Brother Johns asked.
“Well ... two dollars an acre. But if you don’t have it, you can pay me later. We all try to help new folks get started.”
“Thank you, Brother Lewis,” Sister Johns said. “Those is the most hopeful words we’ve heard so far.”
Sister Johns was short, like her husband, but she was pale and thin, the skin of her face drawn tight over her cheekbones. She had some missing teeth in front, and the teeth that were left were mostly brown and broken. She was probably around the age of her husband, but she looked older. She was holding a baby who was just as thin.
“Did you have a hard crossing?” Will asked.
“I cannot think how we ever come through alive,” she said. “Li’l Peter and me, we was the worst, but all of us puked up more’n we ever held down.” A little boy, about four, was standing close to Sister Johns on one side, and a younger girl on the other. Both of them looked too weary to stand up much longer.
“Do you have bedding and dishes and—”
“We do,” Brother Johns said. “We ain’t quite so bad off as we look just now. An’ I can labor twelve hours a day. If someone will give me a chance, I’ll prove myself.”
Will didn’t want to tell Brother Johns how few jobs were available in Nauvoo. It was a matter of everyone scratching out a living however they could. But Will said, “For now, get some rest. It won’t be long ’til you can start cutting this corn. My wife and I don’t have much ourselves just yet, but we can spare a little food to help you get by—and Brother Griggs and I will let your neighbors know that you need help until you—”
“I don’t want a handout,” Brother Johns said. “I on’y need work.”
Will wondered whether he should offer Brother Johns a job. He had his farm at the Big Field to look after, and he plowed for other men, and he had begun to cut roads. He had used the skills he had learned grading railroad beds in England to make a man a good road. That job had led to an offer from a Hancock County official. Will was now cutting eight miles of new public road, with more roads promised him as soon as he could get to them. So he actually needed some help. The problem was, he was trying to get money ahead for the brick house he hoped to build next season, and he also wanted to buy a farm of his own.
Will had his dreams. He wanted that farm, but also a fine house in town, and he wanted Liz to have rugs on the floor, fancy furniture, even a pianoforte—everything she had once had in Ledbury. But getting started had been more expensive than he had expected. He had bought a building lot in timbered land on the bluff, so he hadn’t had to buy logs, but he had purchased window sashes and doors, and shingles for the roof. He had also had to buy a strong plow with an iron share—to turn the prairie sod—and he had needed tools. There had been a well to dig and to outfit, and the groundwater was so full of lime, he already knew he needed a cistern to collect and store rainwater. He had bought a cow and had penned it in with a makeshift fence, but he needed to build a cowshed and a good corral. The cow—along with a churn and butter molds—had all cost money, and so had a pregnant Berkshire sow and a flock of chickens. The money Liz’s father had given her was gone now, spent on the oxen, and most of his own savings were spent besides.
He certainly could have used a hired man, but paying Brother Johns would cut into Will’s profit, and he knew only one way to get ahead. He needed to use his own strong back to earn and save every dollar he could. The roadwork had been helpful because the pay was in cash—a rare thing in Hancock County—but the plowing for farmers usually paid out in a few bags of grain, or maybe some chickens. People starting out were like Brother Johns. They needed to prepare land for farming, but they had no cash and sometimes nothing to trade. They all intended to pay him in time, but Will wondered how he could ever accomplish his plans if he didn’t get something in his hand more often—and more quickly—for the work he had already done.
So Will didn’t offer work to Brother Johns. It was Brother Griggs who said, “Let me do some askin’ about. The Law brothers is openin’ up a gristmill and a sawmill, and they might be lookin’ to hire some men.”
“And I’ll help you repair that roof,” Will said.
“Just show me what needs to be done and I’ll take it on myself.”
Will nodded. He wiped his face again, and then he handed the hoe to Brother Johns. “I’ll let you take over this garden,” he said. “But I’d recommend you not hoe until morning. Get out of this heat until then.”
“Is it always this hot?” Sister Johns asked. She used her sleeve to wipe sweat from her face.
“No,” Brother Griggs said. “In winter, it’s so cold your nose freezes shut when you take a deep breath.” He laughed. “So just take an average, summer and winter, and it all evens out.”
Brother Johns did laugh a little, but Sister Johns looked down at her baby as if to say, “I’m sorry, little one, that I brought you into this.”
“Sister Johns,” Will said, “it’s Zion. It’s more work than I ever imagined, but it’s worth it. In ten years it will be the finest place in the world to live.”
“I know. It’s what we keep sayin.’ But I didn’t know what it was like to cross a ocean.”
Will patted her on the shoulder. “I know,” he said. “But it’s behind us now. We have to look ahead, not back.”
She was nodding, and so was Brother Johns, but Will knew it would take them a while before they stopped wondering whether they should have stayed in Wales. And there were harder things to deal with than the weather and the poverty. Will wondered whether anyone had told them that Joseph Smith was hiding out these days and they may not see him for a time. Lilburn Boggs, the former governor of Missouri, had survived a pistol wound in May, and he had accused Joseph Smith of ordering Orrin Porter Rockwell, a fellow Mormon, to pull the trigger. Governor Carlin of Illinois had agreed to an extradition order, and Joseph had been arrested. Only a judgment in Joseph’s favor in the Nauvoo Municipal Court had delayed his being hauled back to Missouri. But he was being sought again, and the fact was, Joseph didn’t dare allow himself to be taken. He knew that he would be murdered in Missouri.
Th
ere were also other problems that worried Will just as much. John C. Bennett, who had served as a counselor in the First Presidency to Joseph Smith and also as mayor of Nauvoo, had been accused of immoral behavior and had been excommunicated from the Church. But since then he had been writing letters to newspapers “exposing” Joseph Smith as the “King of Impostors.”
Will believed that all of Bennett’s claims were outright lies, but he knew the effect the man’s accusations were having on people across the country, especially in Hancock County. He had seen plenty of animosity as he dealt with local citizens. There were now around five thousand Mormons in Nauvoo, and the influx of immigrants was shifting the balance of power. Such rapid change was both angering and frightening to those who had lived in the county before the Saints had begun to settle in the area.
Will wasn’t happy with the attitude of some of the Saints, either. There were always rumors being passed around the city, and some of them were critical of Joseph Smith. Life was hard here, and some people were doubting that they had been wise in coming.
Will did want a house and a farm. But more than that, he wanted to live with a people who followed Jesus Christ. He told himself every day not to listen to rumors, not to worry what John Bennett and a few others had to say, but to keep his eyes on the reason he had brought Liz to live in Zion. She was expecting a baby in October, and he wanted their child—and all the children they would have—to be raised among the Saints.
“Brother Griggs tells us there’s been a good deal of sickness here,” Sister Johns said. She looked at her baby again, and Will knew what she was thinking.
Will tried to think what to do. He had his dreams, but he also wanted this new family to feel what Zion could be. He hoped they wouldn’t be too disappointed by some of the difficulties they would face. Some Saints had already moved away, disillusioned. He hesitated, wondering whether he would regret his words, but then said, “Brother Johns, I could use some help some days. It’s hard to plow with so many oxen—keep the rows straight and scour the blade as I go. If you can’t find any better work, I could pay you a dollar a day to labor with me. I’m thinking I could get more acres finished in a day and come out just as well.”
“That would be fine indeed, Brother Lewis,” Brother Johns said. “And I’d learn somethin’ about farmin’ at the same time.”
“Aye. No question.”
But Will was watching Sister Johns, whose eyes had filled with tears. “Thank you. Oh, thank you,” she was saying. What Will couldn’t push away entirely, however, was his concern that the wages he paid someone else might actually set his own plans back. The house he wanted to build was already seeming less of a possibility for the coming year.
• • •
Liz Lewis had walked out to “get a little air,” but she hadn’t lasted long. The temperature in the house was oppressive, but the outside air was worse. There was not even a breeze to stir the leaves on the trees. Her baby was squirming inside her, as though too hot itself, and that made her wonder how she could hold out for two more months. She was not sleeping well. In England temperatures always cooled at night, and she could snuggle down in her bed. But the heat in Nauvoo persisted all night, and her body seemed a furnace. She had tried to find good positions for sleeping, but she simply never felt comfortable. She knew she kept Will awake with all her turning and shifting. The truth was, she resented him a little when he did sleep, no matter how hard he worked every day. But all that was part of the crossness she was feeling lately.
Liz sat on one of the straight-backed chairs Will had brought home that summer. They were someone’s castoffs, but of pretty good quality, and Will had repaired the broken rungs. He kept saying he wanted to buy better furniture now that they were in their new cabin, but Liz knew it bothered him to spend anything right now. He had promised her father that she wouldn’t have to live in a log cabin very long. Sometimes she thought Will worried more about that promise than he worried about her—and was much too stubborn for his own good. She tried to remind herself that he was never lazy, that he would always work hard to provide for her, but she still wished he would work fewer hours and come home to her more often.
Liz actually knew that she should be pleased that she and Will had come as far as they had in such a short time. Will had prepared a few logs even when he was still weak, but then their neighbor, Warren Baugh, had gathered a group of Church brothers and they had finished felling a good number of white oaks. A week later, some of the same men had returned and raised the cabin in a single day. It was a “block house,” made of hewn logs, squared to give the outside of the house a flat surface. Will hadn’t plastered the house yet, but it was one of the things he soon planned to do—or at least he kept saying that he would. What he had done was put down split-log puncheon floors so that Liz wasn’t walking on dirt. The thick walls were well chinked, and Will had bought and installed sashes with glass windows. The house had two rooms: a large living area, sixteen by sixteen feet, with a fireplace and a dry sink, and also a separate bedroom. That was more than most newcomers had, but then, the builders had followed Will’s plan.
The house was not as hot as the badly chinked shack they had lived in on Partridge Street, but that was hard to remember on a day like this when the humid air seemed to penetrate the walls. It didn’t help that Liz was carrying an extra layer of fat. When she had first arrived in Nauvoo, she had talked to Patty Sessions, a midwife, who had told her she was too thin—and that wasn’t good for the baby. Liz had made up for that since then, but she felt ugly when she looked in her little mirror and saw her rounded cheeks. She had always been told how pretty she was, with her dark hair and pale green eyes. She knew it was vain to worry about her looks, but in truth, she hated to think that her beauty would wear out here amid all her work, and with the birth of more children.
Liz had been telling herself that she would soon have to cook something for dinner, but she kept putting off building a fire. And then, to her surprise, Will walked into the house. She had expected him to work in the garden much longer. He had left very early that morning, but he had returned to the house not long after noon and said that his oxen simply couldn’t keep working in the heat. He had decided to let them rest in the shade at the farm where he boarded them while he caught up on his garden.
“Too hot for oxen, but not for you?” Liz had asked him.
But he had responded the way he always did. “I can’t just sit here all afternoon. There’s too much to do.”
That wouldn’t have been so bad if he hadn’t stepped through the door just when she was sitting down. She stood now and said, “I was just going to start a fire. But you don’t want to eat already, do you?”
“No. I’m leaving again. Brother Lancaster promised to pay me for the plowing I did for him last month. I need to walk out to his place and see what I can get from him.”
“Walk out there in this heat?”
“Not to the farm. Just to his place on the east edge of town.”
“Couldn’t you rest a little, just once, and—”
“Certainly. And I will one of these days.” He smiled at her. “But I’ve wanted to get that money for the last fortnight and I haven’t found time to call on him.”
Liz gave up. Will would rest someday, all right—when he was in his grave. She worried sometimes that he would reach that grave way too early. “When should I plan to have supper ready?”
“There’s no hurry. Don’t even think about starting a fire in the house. If we need to cook something, I’ll build a fire outside when I get back.”
Now she was a little ashamed for the resentment she had been feeling. He was such a gentle, good man—and he was looking very handsome with his good-hearted smile and his face so browned from the sun.
“Why cook anything?” Will asked. “Don’t we have some bread and butter we can eat? That’s all I need—that and a gallon of cold water.”
“Did you bring anything fresh-picked from the garden?”
“I should have pulled a few carrots and parsnips, but there’s a new family down there, and they need the food more than we do.” She watched him look down at the floor. She could always guess when he thought he’d let her down. “A Welsh family named Johns are going to stay in that old shack. They look like ghosts, all of them, worn down about as bad as anyone I’ve seen get off the boat.”
“Other than you, you mean?”
“Maybe. But I didn’t look at me.”
“I did.”
Will nodded. “I told Brother Johns he could keep up the garden and I would help him, and then we’d share the pickings. I know you were expecting to have a root crop to store for the winter, but I don’t know how I can haul everything back here right in front of their noses—when they hardly have anything to get by on.”
Liz understood that. She would have done the same thing, she was sure, and she was glad Will thought that way. “That’s fine,” she said. “But we need to think about winter. We have pigs to slaughter, but we can’t live on pork and cornbread.”
“I know. I thought about that when I was walking up here. That’s why I’m calling on Lancaster. If he’ll pay me, I can buy enough beans and wheat flour to get us through.”
She nodded. She was well aware that many people had less than she did. But she didn’t like cornbread, and Will hadn’t planted wheat this season. If Brother Lancaster didn’t pay them, and they couldn’t buy wheat flour, she hated to think how long the winter would drag on.
“Lie down for a while, Liz. You look tired.”
Liz didn’t need to be told how awful she looked. “I’ll lie down when you do,” she said, hearing the crossness return to her voice. She even saw Will cringe, as if to say, “Uh-oh. I just said the wrong thing.” And then he cleared out.
Liz was sorry. She told herself that when he came back she needed to tell him that she appreciated his hard work. But for now, she could only think of what she had just lost. She had helped Will sow that garden, and she had hoed weeds when she was in no condition for such work. Now everything was probably gone—or at least split in half. She had counted on having those potatoes for the winter.
