Through Cloud and Sunshine

by Dean Hughes

  “That’s good, Will. I’m glad you didn’t fight him.”

  But she sensed that he still didn’t want to look at her, and she wondered what it was he hadn’t said.

  “One other thing,” Will said. “I decided today, I’m going to buy you a pistol that you can keep here in the house. If a man ever came after you—and wanted to hurt you and Jacob—could you bring yourself to pull the trigger?”

  Liz had never thought of such a thing. “Who would bother me, Will?”

  “Some of these folks in the county are making claims—saying they want to drive us away, the way the mobs did in Missouri.”

  “But they couldn’t do that again, could they—not with the Legion to defend us?”

  “No. It’s all just talk. But some might try to snipe at us, make us so unhappy we’d prefer to leave.”

  Liz was understanding now. “This man—this Samples. He made threats, didn’t he?”

  “He’s all talk. He and his brother are both the same. But I would still feel better if you had a way to protect yourself if I wasn’t here.”

  Liz had certainly worried about many things since coming to Nauvoo—but never about this. She felt the fear in her stomach adding to the unsettled state it was already in.

  Will walked back to her. “Don’t worry, all right? I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  “You just said, you won’t always be here.”

  “I know. But Samples knows not to take me on. If he bothered you, he knows what he’d get.”

  “You fought him today, didn’t you?”

  “No, I didn’t. But I threw him down—just to warn him, to let him know not to try anything with us.”

  Liz walked to the table and sat down. She felt faint. Jacob came to her as though he sensed something was wrong. She picked him up and hugged him.

  “I didn’t want to tell you all this, Liz. I knew how you would take it.”

  “How do you take it? You’re telling me you want to buy a gun for me.”

  “I know. Just to relieve my mind a little. But the Lord will look out for us.”

  “I’m sure that’s what the Saints in Missouri said too.”

  Will clearly had nothing to say to that. He told her he would not be gone long, and he said he was sorry to have frightened her. But when he left, Liz felt as though the world had changed. She had never imagined that anyone would ever want to hurt her. And she wanted nothing to do with guns.

  • • •

  Will had known as he rode his horse home that he needed to tell Liz certain things—about Billy, about giving up the roadwork—but he had wanted to do it without frightening her. And he had wanted to leave out all the worst details. The trouble was, he had also made up his mind to buy a pistol, and he hadn’t known how to tell her that. Now he had told her pretty much everything, and he had seen how frightened she was.

  Will knew that he never should have touched Samples, and yet, he hoped that he had shown the man that he was no one to take lightly. But now he had to worry about his wife every day, and he had had to scare Liz enough to prepare her to shoot a man, if it came to that. All his study of the Book of Mormon and the New Testament had opened his mind to a better way of thinking, but the Samples brothers had left him with no clear answers. He thought maybe he could turn his own cheek, but he would defend his wife and child no matter what it took.

  When Will entered the counting room in the brick store, he was feeling the weight of all these concerns. But when Brother Clayton saw him, he said immediately, “Brother Lewis, it’s good you came by. Joseph’s in his office upstairs. He wants to see you.”

  That was the last thing Will wanted to hear. He couldn’t go off on another mission, certainly not after the things that had happened today. He walked up the stairs, but this time he knew that he had to say no to the Prophet. “President Smith, did you want to see me?” he asked.

  Joseph turned to look over his shoulder and then, when he saw Will, stood and extended his hand. “Yes, I do. Did Brother Clayton get word to you already?”

  As Will shook hands, he said, “Just now he did, but I actually came down to speak with him. I had some things I wanted to mention to you, too, if you have the time.”

  “What’s that, Will? Sit down.”

  Will sat in a chair by the door, and Joseph turned his own chair around to face him. Will told Joseph about his encounter with George Samples, about the ox, and about giving up the road job.

  Joseph sat with his hands on his knees, his big chest expanded. He had taken off his frock coat and cravat, and his collar was open. He listened carefully, asked a few questions, and then said, “Don’t worry, Brother Will. The Lord is in this, whether you see it or not.”

  Will waited and wondered. Joseph always had a way of seeing things from a broad perspective, discerning the purpose behind events. Will trusted him, but he wondered whether Joseph had understood the danger that might be ahead.

  “I need you and your oxen,” Joseph said. “That’s why I sent for you.”

  “My oxen?”

  “Yes. We need to increase our effort on the temple before the season ends this fall. We haven’t pushed the work far enough ahead this year.”

  “The problem is, I’m still farming and still plowing for people. I could maybe help out a little, but I—”

  “Don’t tell me. Tell the Lord. He needs you, Will. And He needs those oxen to haul stones from the quarry up to the temple site. I’ll find some money somewhere to buy you another ox—and that will repay you a little. But it’s mostly a matter of putting first things first. It’s not easy for any of us, but it’s what we have to do.”

  Will hardly knew what to say. He couldn’t do this. He had crops in the ground, crops he would have to harvest, and he was getting no savings ahead. By next year he still wanted to start the house he had promised to build for Liz. If he spent too much time hauling stone, he would be fortunate even to get enough food put away for winter.

  But Will didn’t say that. And he didn’t ask for time to talk to Liz. He knew what she would say. This was simply something he had to do. Nothing was more important than finishing the temple.

  Joseph laughed. “Come on, Will, don’t look so down in the mouth. What a blessing it is to work on the temple. And you will be paid. We can’t pay you what you were making grading roads, but then, maybe that’s why the Lord took that away from you. He knew that I needed you in town to build His temple.”

  Will was relieved to know he would be paid. But it wouldn’t be cash. He would be paid in kind, he supposed—or with a draw from the storehouse. He also wondered how he and Jesse and Daniel could get their crops harvested if he was using the oxen at the temple.

  Joseph seemed to know what Will was thinking. “Will, do as much as you can for us. Let Brother Matthews and Brother Johns take care of your farm. They’re strong men and good workers. When you have to put your oxen to your own work, then do it. But I ask you to give every hour you can to the temple.” He stopped, sat up straighter, and took a long look at Will. “Brother Lewis, we have to finish this temple. It’s our offering to God—and blessings will flow from it for many generations. It’s this generation that will build it, with blood and sweat, and your children and their children will thank you forever.”

  Will nodded. “All right, then,” he said. “I drove the oxen away from the Hyatt place today. In the morning, I’ll ride to the Big Field and bring them on in. For the next few weeks I can put in most of my days at the quarry, and then I’ll just figure out a way to harvest crops when the time comes. If we don’t get some rain soon, we may not have any crops anyway.”

  “Yes. We’re worried about that. But thanks for your help, Brother Will.” A smile came into Joseph’s eyes and spread across his face. “Tell me this,” he said. “What kept you from breaking that man’s head open, right there on the spot?”

 
Will smiled a little too. “I didn’t tell you quite the whole story. When he threatened Liz, I pulled him off his horse and threw him on the ground. I had a good grip on his throat, but I never struck the man. I let him go. I only let him know that I wouldn’t hear that kind of talk about my wife.”

  “God will never punish you for protecting your family, Will. Don’t regret that.”

  “But I want to be more like Jesus Christ, and I can’t seem to find His ways anywhere inside me.”

  “You’re more like Christ than you know. You merely have some rough edges on you.” He nodded rather solemnly. “And I know all about rough edges.”

  Will liked that—liked to think that he and Joseph were alike in some ways. The man was a prophet, but he felt like a big brother, too. Will had the feeling that if they had grown up in the hills of England together, they would have been mates, would have trapped a hare or two together.

  Will thanked Joseph, told him he’d give his whole heart to the temple, and the two shook hands again. It was all very unsettling to Will, this change in his plans, but he was learning to do what the Lord asked, and he told himself not to worry too much.

  Will stopped in and talked to William Clayton for a few minutes—made sure he understood that Will might not be able to make a payment on his land this fall. Brother Clayton was wearing his full suit of clothes, in spite of the heat. He made no adjustment to his British ways, as Will tended to do. But Brother Clayton patted Will on the shoulder and said, “Pay when you can. Joseph understands that when he calls you to work for the Lord, you may not be able to meet some of your other obligations.”

  “But I will pay it, Brother Clayton. If we salvage some sort of harvest, I’ll be able to pay some of what I owe.”

  “That will be fine.”

  Will walked out the back door of the store and mounted his horse. He was riding away when he saw John and Jane Benbow in a little one-horse carriage. They were pulling up at the front of the store.

  Will reined up his horse and swung himself down as Brother Benbow was stepping out of his carriage. “I’m so glad to see you,” he told Will. “I see Brother Jesse quite often. He tells me how busy you two are. Thank heaven you helped him, Will. He and Ellen were getting ready to pull up and leave—and that wouldn’t have been good for them. He says he’s never known a man to work as hard as you, but he likes that. He seems happy.”

  Will didn’t want to tell his story again, especially didn’t want the story about the ox told around Nauvoo. He had thought about that and decided it was better not to build anger inside or outside the city. So he only said, “We’re backing off some of our roadwork before harvest. Jesse might make it home earlier at night—so he can see his family a little more.”

  “Well, that’s good too.” Brother Benbow walked around the carriage and gave Jane a hand as she stepped down. Will followed and shook hands with Sister Benbow, who told him to greet Liz for her.

  “I just spoke with President Smith,” Will said. “He asked me to bring my oxen into town to help out with hauling stone to the temple. Maybe I can be a little closer to my own family now.”

  “That’s good, Will. Very good,” Sister Benbow said. She was a gentle little woman with a quiet voice, but Will knew how firm she was in all her convictions.

  “Can you make time to do that, Will?” John asked.

  “I’ll find a way. But I’m still a little out of breath right now, just trying to think how I can get everything done.”

  “I know how you feel,” Brother Benbow said. “The temple takes our money and our time, and I’ve heard men complain about it. But Joseph knows why it matters. We have to trust him.”

  “Aye,” Will said. “I do trust him. I told him that. But I want to build Liz a better house before much longer. I promised Brother Duncan, back in Ledbury, that I wouldn’t make her live in a log house too long.”

  “Back home in England, that’s how you saw things, Will. You were taking a young woman away from a nice home, settling her in a wilderness. I don’t blame Brother Duncan for making you promise, and I don’t blame you for wanting to keep that promise. But there are more important things in life than big houses and fancy furnishings.”

  “You gave up all that for the gospel, Brother Benbow.” Will knew that Brother Benbow had provided much of the money to print the British edition of the Book of Mormon, and he had used his own money to pay the passage for many of his brothers and sisters to emigrate.

  “Don’t make it sound so great a sacrifice, Brother Will. Jesus told the rich young man to give up everything and follow Him. If we call ourselves followers of Christ, we have to learn to put first things first.”

  “Aye, but you’ve given up more than most of us.”

  “That’s not been difficult for me, Will. We’re all the same here. And that’s how it ought to be.”

  Jane laughed quietly, and Brother Benbow looked over at her. “All right, then. Jane’s laughing at me,” he said. “It’s not been entirely easy for me to lose my ‘place’ in the world, as we thought of it back then. But if I can learn a little humility, that’s something I can take with me into the next world. And a house, I never can.”

  Will nodded. He could wait a while longer to build that brick house, he supposed.

  “I know how much it meant to you to own land, Will. And I understand that. You grew up on another man’s farm, the same as I did. But it’s not the land in Zion we came for. It’s Zion itself. And I don’t know about you, but I think I’m only just beginning to understand what that means.”

  Will agreed. As he mounted his horse again, he looked up at the temple, which had been rising slowly and steadily all summer. It occurred to him that the building meant more to him now than it had when he had gotten up that morning. It had been a strange day, and a frightening one, but maybe one that he would value even more as days passed. What he needed to do now was go home and have another talk with Liz, and this time, calm her fears and testify to his own faith.

  But there was something else he had to do first. He had been telling Liz to buy herself some fabric to make a new dress for the little excursion on the Maid of Iowa. Liz had admitted that she had found some lovely green satinette at Pratt and Snow’s new store, just north of the temple. “It’s not really satin,” she had told Will. “It’s mostly cotton. But it’s still far too expensive. I’ve thought some more about how I can alter my Sunday dress and make it look almost new.”

  But Will wasn’t having that, and he was finally home early enough to stop at the store. He rode his horse along Main Street to the north and then up the hill on Young Street. The fabric Will found at Parley Pratt and Erastus Snow’s store was green, all right, but a pale green, and luminescent—exactly what he had told Liz to find. What he also found was that it was expensive material, even if it was not real satin. But he didn’t care. In the back of his mind were the ugly words he had heard from George Samples that morning, and the fear he had seen in Liz’s eyes. He simply had to find a way to bless her life more than he had so far. She had accepted their plight better than he had, and she had turned herself into the hardworking woman she had never expected to be. He wanted to give her this one little pleasure. So he bought the fabric and carried it home to Liz. He knew she would tell him he had done the wrong thing, and he also knew she would be very pleased.

  Chapter 15

  Liz was becoming a better seamstress. A ball gown was quite a different chore from a man’s work shirt, but with Sister Cook’s help Liz had fashioned a beautiful dress. She had finished it the night before the riverboat excursion and had finally tried it on in front of Will. He had actually gasped when she walked from the bedroom. “Oh, don’t pretend,” she had told him. “My hair is not even curled. I’ll be much more presentable tomorrow night.”

  “Any prettier and I’ll pass right out,” he had said, and then he had taken her in his arms and kissed her.


  “I know I should have made it with an empire waist, to leave room as the baby grows, but it’s just not the style now. Am I terrible?”

  Will had no idea what an empire waist was. He only knew that this dress made her waist look very small, and the top was scooped a little to show her lovely neck. The fabric shimmered in the firelight as she spun around. “You’ll wear it again next year. Look how slender you are now, after having a baby last year.”

  “That’s what happens when I chase Jacob around all day.”

  “And work so hard around this place.”

  “It’s good for me to work, Will. I can chop wood almost as well as Nelly now, and I carry water like a washerwoman. Feel how strong my arms are.”

  But Will felt bad about that. He didn’t feel her arms. He pulled her close again and held all of her. She laughed and pushed him away. “Be careful with my gown, sir,” she said, teasing him with her smile.

  “I will, Mrs. Lewis,” he said, and he almost admitted his secret, but he managed to keep quiet. What he knew, and she found out the next evening, was that he had borrowed a little one-horse carriage. He couldn’t make Liz walk down the dusty streets in her new dress—or ride in an oxcart.

  He worked at the quarry that next day, but he came home early with the gig they would ride in that night. He saw the delight in her eyes when she saw it. She had brushed and ironed his only suit of clothes, which had gotten a little tired during his time in Nauvoo, and she had shined his Sunday boots even though he had told her that he would come home in time to take care of them himself.

  Nelly came to sit with Jacob, and after Liz had given her lots of instructions, Will took Liz’s arm and walked her to the carriage. He helped her with her skirt as she got in, and then he proudly drove the carriage over to Parley Street and down the hill. He liked greeting the people he saw along the way—all of whom surely guessed that the Lewises had been invited to attend the special event with Joseph and Emma. Will believed with all his heart that one person should not hold himself above any others in Zion, but he also remembered seeing guests arrive at Joseph and Emma’s house in the past, and he had always hoped to be included someday. He told himself this was his and Liz’s turn—that was all. But he sat up straight in the carriage, feeling proud, and he watched the people look at Liz, even call out to her how lovely she looked.