by Dean Hughes
What Liz couldn’t accept was the idea that Jacob would forget her, as Oscar claimed he would. All the days they had spent together, the words she had taught him, the hurts she had kissed and hugged away—how could Jacob grow old never remembering, maybe never even knowing all that? If he went to St. Louis now, she might never see him again.
“You’re going with your daddy, Jacob. He loves you. And you’ll have a new mum. She’ll love you too. You’ll be happy, Jakey. Everything will be just fine. Do you understand that?”
He gripped her tighter. She didn’t know how much he was understanding. The words he knew weren’t adequate for what he must be feeling—fearing.
“I’ll love you forever, and I’ll try to find you someday—so you can remember me. And in heaven we’ll be friends. I know we will. Then you’ll know me, I’m sure of that.” She was losing control, feeling as though she could never walk out the door with him. And yet, she was already moving that direction, and now Jacob was crying, tightening his grip.
• • •
Outside, Will was standing with his head down, not saying anything. When he finally glanced up, he saw that Brother Clarkston was also looking at the ground. Amanda was still sitting stiff, still not looking at anyone. Everything was silent outside, except that a cardinal repeated its pretty song at intervals. Liz had taught Jacob to look for the pretty red birds in the trees, to know their song. Would he remember that song someday? Would he know why he recognized it?
Liz walked to Clarkston and handed him the flour sack. She embraced Jacob with both arms again, and then she tried to hand him to Will. “I can’t,” he said. “I’ll run away with him before I’ll hand him over.”
“Just hug him.”
So Will took him in his arms. “I love you, Jake,” he said, but tears were coming now, and Liz knew that that was humiliating to him. He handed the boy back to Liz quickly and walked toward the house.
Jacob grasped Liz tight again, so she hugged him one more time, and then she said, “It’s all right, Jacob. Go to your new daddy now. It will be all right.”
But he wouldn’t let go, and as she tried to pull him loose, he screamed. She pulled one of his arms free and Brother Clarkston grasped him around the middle and tugged him away. Jacob was going wild by then, kicking, reaching for his mother, wailing.
“I am sorry for this,” Brother Clarkston said. “I tell ye now, I will allus take good care of ’im, and I will allus tell ’im what you done for ’im.”
Liz thought her legs were going to go out from under her, but Will had come back and was there now, holding her, keeping her up.
Brother Clarkston walked around his wagon, stepped up, and took his seat next to his wife, still holding Jacob, who was fighting to break free. Amanda untied the lines and took them up as though she had driven plenty of wagons in her life. She gave the lines a flip and said, “Giddup.” The horses plodded forward and made a wide turn, then headed out to Rich Street.
The last time Liz saw Jacob, he was still reaching and screaming, “Mummy! Mummy! Mummy!”
She turned to Will and he held her for a moment, and then they walked back to the house. Daniel was awake now and crying. She was glad for that. She hurried to him, picked him up, and pressed her face against him.
“We have Daniel,” she told Will. “We’ll be all right.” But she didn’t believe it. She only wanted Will to be comforted. It seemed even harder for him than for her.
“This isn’t right,” Will said. “He’s riding off with our son. What makes him the father any more than I am?”
“We’ll be all right. We’ll go on. It’s what we have to do.”
She told herself that she had survived before, after Mary Ann, and she would survive again. But it didn’t feel as though she could. All the gloom of losses seemed to be piling up on her. The Prophet was gone. Her father was gone. Her mother and sister were lost to her.
“Why do things keep happening?” Will said. “When is God ever going to look out for His people?” And then with anger in his voice, he declared, “I wish we’d stayed in England!”
“Will, don’t do that to me,” Liz said. “I don’t need that now. I need you to be strong.”
He wrapped his arms around her again, her and the baby. “Liz, I can’t do any more of this. I’m angry. I want to strike back at the men who killed Joseph. I want to bludgeon George Samples again for the fear he’s caused you. And I want to chase down Oscar Clarkston and do the same to him. All God ever tells me is to accept His will—and I say, why should I? When are things ever going to be made right?”
“We’ll be all right, Will. We have Daniel. We have each other.” She didn’t say it, but she knew somehow that God was with them. All the pain and disappointment had made better people of them. There were blessings with the pain. But she couldn’t get that many words out, couldn’t even remember what she was thankful for; she just knew that they couldn’t fall apart, that they had to accept one more hardship and move ahead once again.
“I’m sorry,” Will said. “I’ll fight this off. I will. I won’t let you down. But Liz, I need something to go right. I need to know that everything won’t always go wrong for us. How much can God ask of us?”
She didn’t know the answer to that. And she was somehow glad that Will was angry, not just willing to hand over their son without caring. She knew he would fight for her, too; she had always known that. She couldn’t live without his strength.
And then she heard Jacob, screaming. Had the wagon stopped out on the road somewhere? Why weren’t the Clarkstons just moving on as quickly as they could?
But the sound was coming closer. Will had heard it too. He let go of Liz and strode to the door. When he threw it open, Liz heard Oscar outside, heard that he was saying something to Will over the screams of her son. Just as she got to the door, she saw him hand Jacob to Will. Jacob grabbed his daddy, but then he saw Liz in the doorway and screamed again, reached for her. She ran to him and grabbed him into her arms.
She held him tight as he clung to her, still crying. And then she looked at Brother Clarkston, who was saying, “I am sorry for this, Sister Lewis. Sorry I did this to you.”
What was he saying?
“I did na’ understan’ ’til we drove away. ’Twas Amanda stopped the wagon and tol’ me, ‘This is wrong. You can na’ do this ta this child.’”
So it was true. Brother Clarkston was bringing him home.
“You won’t ever leave the Church, will you?” Oscar asked.
“No,” Will said. “We’ll raise him in the gospel.”
“Could I stop to see ’im fro’ time to time?”
“Yes, yes,” Liz said. “Oh, Brother Clarkston, we’ll cherish him forever, and I’ll tell him what a good father he has. He’ll know.”
“If you get pushed out, you might think ’bout St. Louis. There’s work there—and land for sale.”
“We’ll go with the Church,” Will said. “We’ll do what the Brethren want us to do.”
“Well, that’s right, I guess. But if you move on, let me know where you go—aw right?”
“I promise you, we will,” Will said. He reached out and shook hands with Brother Clarkston.
“Good-bye, Jacob. Please do na’ forget me.” But he didn’t step closer, clearly understanding how much he had already frightened the boy.
He walked away, but as he did, Liz saw that the man’s body was shaking. She knew that he was crying. And now she could only think of his pain.
Chapter 24
Nauvoo was quiet, solemn. Something like peace had descended upon Hancock County. Even though Thomas Sharp and a few others continued to advocate expulsion of the Saints, most of the old citizens seemed to take for granted that the Mormon church would now die on its own and mob action would not be necessary. The Times and Seasons called for justice, demanded that the murderers be tried and punishe
d, but Church members admitted to one another that no one would ever be convicted by a jury of local citizens. Still, the nervous calm—unlikely to last forever—was better than war, and both Mormons and old settlers began to go about their lives. Most were farmers, and they had crops to look after. They hoped to harvest enough from a thin crop to feed their families for another winter.
In Nauvoo, as a few weeks passed, there were those who decided to leave, or who sided with the dissenters in their opposition to Joseph’s latest teachings, but the majority of the members went back to their work, whatever it was. Life would go on, they told each other, and they had to commit themselves to carrying on the work of the kingdom established by their Prophet.
Will had a chance to talk to Jacob Backenstos again one day, and he learned that Blake Samples was slowly recovering. “He may not ever be quite right, the doc says,” Backenstos told him. He smiled. “I said that if he wasn’t, it would be hard to tell any difference.” Will didn’t laugh. He was relieved to know that he hadn’t killed the man.
“I can tell you right now that those boys won’t bring any charges against you. I made it very clear to George that I didn’t believe a word he was telling me, and I promised him that I’d look very closely at his part in the whole thing if he pushed the matter. He might come after me sometime, and he’ll probably look for a way to get at you sooner or later, but I told him if he did that, he would spend the rest of his life in jail. I don’t know if that scared him or not. I know one thing: He still looks like he’s suffering with some bad headaches. And that’s just what he had coming.”
Will still couldn’t laugh. He thought of what he had done to those men—had to do to them, he told himself—but the vision of it was terrible to him. He had gone back a good deal lately to reading the scriptures, and he could find very little that consoled him. He wondered what Jesus would have done in such a situation, and he knew that he could never picture the Savior attacking men that way. Will had wanted so badly to be a better person, and now he had blood on his hands. Liz told him that she was thankful he had defended himself—for the sake of her and the boys—and Will liked to think of it that way. But the memory was in his hands and arms, the feel of those blows he had delivered, and it was in his vision, the blood running between George’s fingers.
Another concern for Will and for everyone else was that the Church felt leaderless. No one knew who could bring direction to the membership again. Some believed that Sidney Rigdon carried the highest authority, since he was the only survivor from the First Presidency, but he had moved to Pittsburgh just days before Joseph and Hyrum’s death, partly to establish residency for his run as vice president to Joseph Smith. Most people knew that Joseph had asked for Brother Rigdon to be removed as First Counselor the year before, and only after an impassioned speech had Sidney received support from other leaders. Beyond that, he had been unstable in recent years, never really the same man since his months in Liberty Jail. For many members, he didn’t appear to be the man who could lead as Joseph had led.
Over the years, various leaders had served as Assistant President, and different methods of succession had been in place. Some argued that young Joseph Smith III, only eleven years old, had been ordained to succeed his father and carry on the work when he was of age to do so. Others held that Joseph had passed his authority to the Twelve Apostles. From that perspective, the Apostles were the only ones who possessed the priesthood keys to perform temple ordinances and to lead the Church.
Will spoke with William Clayton as often as he could, and he heard a great deal about all the discussions going on among the leaders. Brother Clayton had told Will that a secret council Joseph had called that spring—known to insiders as the “Council of Fifty” or the “Kingdom of God”—had been established to deal with secular matters such as locating new places where the Saints could live. A few of that group were now claiming that it was the only body that could carry on in Joseph’s absence. But that, to Brother Clayton, made no sense, since it was a secular council; some members were not even Latter-day Saints.
According to Clayton, President Marks felt that something needed to be done quickly so that a chosen leader had authority to handle financial matters for the Church. A trustee was needed to settle issues of land ownership—and debt. Many property holdings in Nauvoo were in Joseph’s name, and it was not clear what had belonged to him personally and what belonged to the Church. The great problem for Emma Smith was that there were more debts than assets, and she was worried about providing for her family. President Marks and his wife were close to Emma, worried about her, and wanted to hold a meeting to settle on a trustee. John Taylor and Willard Richards had been the only Apostles not serving missions at the time of Joseph’s death. They were joined after a couple of weeks by Parley P. Pratt and George A. Smith. These four Apostles were adamant that they must hold off any major decisions until the return of Brigham Young, President of the Quorum of the Twelve, along with all the other Apostles.
So everything remained in stasis for a time, and Will felt the strain on the people. When troubles had come before, always there had been Joseph to stand before the members and provide perspective and faith. Even in those dark days when he had been locked up in the Liberty Jail in Missouri, or when he had been hiding from lawmen more recently, Joseph had written his revelations and sent them to the Church, and the hope of his return had galvanized the membership. Now, however, there seemed no one to step forward and offer direction.
On August 3, more than five weeks after the murders—now called “the martyrdom” by most members—Sidney Rigdon arrived on a riverboat from Pittsburgh, and the following morning, Sunday, he spoke at the east grove. Will and Liz, like most people, were eager to hear what he might propose about the future of the Church. Will had always found President Rigdon a little too zealous and oratorical for his taste. Since his days in the United Brethren, Will had not liked preachers who carried on too much, who ranted and shouted, and Sidney Rigdon had a little too much of that in him. Joseph had presented his ideas in straightforward explanations and had never minded using simple comparisons, even humor, to make himself clear. Will really felt the Church needed someone like that again. Still, Brother Rigdon had long served next to Joseph, and perhaps now the mantle of leadership had fallen upon him.
The congregation that morning was not as massive as the ones that had heard Joseph at the end of his life, but still, there were thousands of people. Will thought they had all come for the same reason he had—to see whether they felt the power of authority in Brother Rigdon.
But Sidney Rigdon was never one to get to his main point quickly. He spoke for a long time and developed his thoughts slowly. Gradually, however, it was clear what he thought to be true: Joseph was the Prophet of this dispensation, and he was gone. No one could “replace” him. Brother Rigdon, however, had received a revelation while still in Pittsburgh. God, he said, had told him that he should lead the Church himself, as a “guardian.” He would be president and trustee, and he would build the Church up to Joseph and take care of the organization until Joseph III was old enough to assume the role. But even though he called himself a guardian, Will noticed that he expected Joseph Smith to inspire his words and actions—from the other side of the veil—and Brother Rigdon himself would be “a god to this generation ... as Moses was to the children of Israel.”
Something in this didn’t sound right to Will. The man claimed to be inadequate to replace Joseph, but at the same time, his grandiose descriptions of himself sounded anything but humble. And then, as he continued on and on in his frail voice, he seemed to become carried away with his own words. Instead of offering the membership a vision of how the Church could move forward, he spoke of the great winding-up scene, the apocalyptic battles that would end the world. He saw himself as the military leader who would defeat the evil nations of Babylon. Will was especially surprised, even alarmed, when Brother Rigdon said that he would walk into the pal
ace of Queen Victoria and demand a portion of her riches and dominions, and if she turned him down he would “take the little woman by the nose and lead her out.” Will couldn’t imagine what that had to do with being a follower of Jesus Christ.
In the end, President Rigdon claimed that he had no personal desire to lead the Church; he was only offering his revelation for the people to accept if they believed it. He implied that he wanted a response very soon, but no motion was presented to the leadership. When the Saints returned for an afternoon session, Charles C. Rich spoke. But President Marks actually interrupted him, at President Rigdon’s request, to announce that another meeting would be convened that week, on Thursday, and the members would have a chance to vote their will.
Will had been uneasy during President Rigdon’s sermon, and he became more troubled as the day continued. He didn’t want the members to act too quickly, especially not until the other Apostles returned. As he and Liz walked back to their house with their boys, Will asked Liz what she thought. “I don’t know, Will. If Brother Rigdon’s vision is from God, I want to be obedient, but I didn’t like the spirit I felt.”
“You mean, he shouldn’t be promising to lead the queen around by the nose?”
Liz had been letting Jacob walk, and the boy had stopped now to watch a squirrel that had dashed across the road and was sitting up on its haunches under the canopy of trees nearby. Will, who was carrying Daniel, had continued to walk, but now he looked back at Liz. “Why would he say that?” she asked. “And what was all that about fighting a war in Jerusalem? Does he really think the end is so close—and that he is the one to lead the final battle?”
