Palmyra

by Susan Evans McCloud

  “What did he do?” Peter’s voice was thin and uncertain.

  “He told me that he will no longer think of me as his son. He wishes me no ill but, as far as he is concerned, I am dead to him. I told him that I expected no more from him, but that I did expect him to honor his word as far as my brother is concerned.”

  “No, Randolph! Let me come with you. I have no desire to go back there. How can I bear to be near him now?” Peter’s plea troubled both of us.

  “You must bear it for Mother’s sake,” Randolph replied. “He will not treat you poorly; I am fairly certain of that. You will be free of Whittier’s cruelty, and you must endure and make a place for yourself. You deserve it, Peter. Do you not see? Father would triumph entirely if we both walked away!”

  Peter saw. He sunk back against his chair, drained and resigned, but entirely miserable. Randolph rose to his feet. “Will you take me out to the mill now, Esther? Or would you prefer that I ride Tansy myself? You can always send for her later.”

  “I think that is a good idea. Alexander is more or less expecting you.”

  He is all right, I marveled, weak at the realization. He has faced the very worst, and he will be all right now.

  At the door Randolph paused and turned back. “I went to see my mother,” he said. “I felt I . . . had an obligation to—I have caused her such suffering.” He straightened his back, which had seemed to slump at his own words. But he looked at the floor as he added, “Thank you, Esther. I’ll never be able to thank you, I’ll never—”

  I waved him on. “Hush. And hurry now. Be gone with you. I’ll ride out later with Tillie to check on you and let you see how your nephew has grown.”

  The door shut behind him. Peter and I sat in silence for a long time. Finally he rose to his feet. “I’d best go report now,” he said. “But I believe I’ll stop home first and change into some clothes of my own.”

  “That is a wise idea,” I said. “It will make you feel much better.”

  I crossed the room with him, knowing I had to say what was in my heart, had to try to make him see things beyond his own years and experience.

  “If you had not loved him enough, Peter,” I began, “none of this would have happened. I do not think Randolph would have ever come home. And for his own sake he would never have braved his father. You brought him to that.” I kissed his cheek where the boyish tears wet it. “Is it not amazing what love can do?”

  Chapter 18

  Palmyra: March 1830

  Winter had taken hold this year with a vengeance. It was March and we were still tight in the grip of his frosty breath, still imprisoned beneath his layers of ice.

  There were, amazingly enough, many tasks for a blacksmith to perform during these fallow months. Chief among these was mending the many things the farmers had let go until after the busy harvest time: buggies, wagons, sleighs, axes, plowshares, shafts. Then there awaited the tasks occasioned by the constant demand for wood needed for winter fuel, and Eugene and his father were kept busy forging new irons for sled runners, repairing chains, making grab hooks, refacing axes, and sharpening crosscut saws. But, because of the young apprentice, there was time for my husband to follow his own pursuits, for which his passion had grown.

  I was the only one besides Nathan who knew that Georgie was expecting a baby. “I want to finish the year out,” she told me. “We need the money from teaching, and I cannot bear to think of someone taking over my position when my children are counting on me.”

  She did well; perhaps because she knew she could not be sick, she wasn’t. But then, Georgie has always been healthy as a horse and serene and trusting by nature. Perhaps that made a difference as well.

  Despite the harsh weather, Phoebe and I had taken to meeting on my Tuesdays at Tillie’s. Tillie needed the encouragement and something to divert her attention from the nausea and weakness that beset her. And I was given opportunity to fuss then over both my godchildren—Laurie and little Esther, my namesake.

  “I must confess I am relieved that I am not with child yet,” Phoebe told us once. “I want as much time as possible between Esther and the next child—my child—especially if I give birth to a girl.”

  “Do you believe Simon would play favorites?”

  “It is not so much that as—as his fear of pushing Emily and her memory out of his life altogether. He seems almost desperate at times to see her in Esther. Even when I sit of an evening rocking the child to sleep in my arms, he will remark on her likeness to her dead mother—her eyes, her hair, the way her ears are formed, even the way her mouth moves when she speaks.”

  “That is not fair,” I blurted.

  Phoebe fixed her eyes upon me as if to say, Of course it is not fair, Esther. Why can you not be reconciled to that?

  I wondered. I wondered what weakness was in me that caused me to cling to the ideal, to recoil at injustice, to be disappointed when people failed my expectations.

  “You read too much.” That was the answer my mother, in the days of my youth, always gave. “You fill your head with notions and ideas that have no place in reality. They only mix you up, Esther. Leave those old writings alone.”

  But I could not! I read, and I scribbled my own thoughts. And, after all, those writers, who lived in bits and snatches of parchment pressed between leather covers, were people, too. They had to grapple with the day-to-day realities, but they found something in them, or beyond them, to give purpose and meaning to life! I thank heaven that Eugene understands this part of my nature. He, too, is excited by the written word, drawn to the power and persuasion and beauty of man’s expressions of his thoughts and ideals.

  And another concern our weekly discussions had engendered in me: Why was I not yet with child? In the deep safety of my own soul I could admit that I was afraid of being a mother; but I would not say so to anyone else—not even to Eugene, whose consistent hints and gentle teasing let me know that he was eager to become a father, that he would be pleased when that miraculous thing happened to us.

  I thought of the troubles my mother had had; I thought of Josephine’s failures, and I trembled inside. Perhaps I was marked as they were. Perhaps the prize would be denied me, and I would remain the maiden aunt all my life; everyone’s confidant, but with my own arms always empty—and Eugene’s silent reproach ever before my eyes.

  Dismal, dismal! But that was what Josephine had been enduring, and with much less to call on from within herself for assistance. Josephine.

  Randolph had been living at the mill for a few months; Alexander fitted out a cozy little room for him, and I believe that he liked it there. Fresh air, good food, and good companionship had their effect on the lad. The other workers were kind to him and treated him with the easy respect they were accustomed to dealing out to their fellows. It pleased me to see that Alexander had become quite devoted to his errant boarder. He took the unspoken task he had been given—of reforming and rebuilding the boy’s strength, both moral and physical—with the sober attention he gave to every pursuit that fell into his hands. I was concerned as well as pleased; therefore, I had been watching things out of the corner of my eye as carefully as I could.

  One way of doing this was to appear unexpectedly on the premises, with any common excuse that would answer; by and large, I brought baked goods or, in season, fresh herbs and fruits. Once I arrived mid-day and discovered Randolph lunching with Josephine. I gave him the books he had requested and prolonged my stay until he had gone back to his work. Josie was fairly sparkling, that way she does when she has a male audience to woo and enthrall. I asked no questions, but she spoke effusively of him and of how well he “fit in.”

  The next time I came I noted that she had the boy running errands for her, and this brought him more and more into her domain and under her eye. She laughed at the things he said, even when they were not particularly clever, and she touched him overmuch—casual touching, done without thinking: a pat on the shoulder, a hand laid momentarily over his hand or on his arm.


  I agonized over whether or not I ought to speak to her; or should I speak to Randolph instead? I rejected that idea; I did not wish to raise doubts or worries in his mind, to sour his progress there, especially with fears that might prove unfounded. I could not discern what his reactions were; I believe he was very careful when I was around. He is young, I reasoned, bruised by life, beset by feelings of inadequacy. He could easily be entranced by Josie’s charms, delighted by her attentions, her apparent admiration of him.

  Randolph is a good-looking boy. He has grown tall and is well muscled, despite the limp injured arm. He has a fine mind, an interesting way of expressing himself, and a smile that tugs at one’s heart. Even the reticence and self-containment he has developed by way of protection add to his allure, at least in a woman’s mind, I would think. I know my sister. I know her tastes, I know her weaknesses.

  I watched Alex Hall, too. His feelings were the most difficult of all to discover. He carried his thin, compact body with dignity and directed the order of his business with very little fuss and very few words. The lines of his face were tightly stretched over nose and cheekbone, and his eyes, small and pale of coloring, were as careful of expression as all else about him. Yet, I liked this man still. I had caught glimpses past the barriers, past the tidiness and circumspection, and I liked what I saw.

  March was here. Spring would soon be upon us, then summer; and with summer, picnics and hayrides and dances in the sweet meadow, out under the moon. Something must be resolved before then! I continued my visits, I continued my watchfulness, which was all I could do.

  It was the middle of the night, and I was awakened for no apparent reason. I reached over to touch Eugene; he was not there in the bed beside me. I lifted up my head. Moonlight splattered across the floor, like pools of spilt milk. My husband was not in the room. I sat up and called out to him. Nothing but silence answered me. My feet wiggled across the cold floorboards in search of my slippers. An unreasoning fear began to take hold of me. I lit the candle that sat close by on the table and pattered out to the kitchen, still calling his name.

  Nothing. The emptiness seemed to have stretched, because he was not in it—because he was supposed to be here! Dandelion opened one eye, saw that it was only me disturbing his rest, and closed it again. He did not move a hair or a whisker. All about me was in order. All about me was mute.

  His clothes. I returned to our bedroom. His pants and shirt were no longer draped over the chair back; his shoes and the long woolen stockings I knit for him last autumn were nowhere to be found.

  He has gone some place he does not want me to know about. There was nothing else I could surmise. A sick animal—the thought crossed my mind. But we had only Tansy, the cow, and a few chickens sharing our barn. And how would he have known, have thought to rise up in the midnight hour and trudge out back to see if all there was well?

  I sensed something else, something altogether different. But because I trusted him, I thought, He does not want me to worry. He knows if he wakes me up and I know where he has gone, I will worry. I felt somehow certain of that.

  I wrapped my warmest shawl about my shoulders and sat in my rocker in the kitchen, with only the one candle lit and drafts of air chilling my ankles, and wondered what I should do. Every impulse urged me to dress and go after him. But I can be rash. What if I could not find him? What if my appearance embarrassed him—or complicated whatever was happening? For long minutes I agonized, my mind going back and forth, back and forth, unable to determine the proper course.

  He did not come. The silence was too much for me. I drew on shift and dress with trembling fingers, pulled the shawl over head and shoulders, extinguished the candle, and slipped out into the night.

  The light from the moon, high and diffused, was enough to direct me; I have come to know my way about the streets of Palmyra, and I had decided already where I would look first.

  The murmur of voices, a number of voices, growing louder as I drew nearer, told me I had reasoned aright. But what? a cluster of men outside Grandin’s printing establishment in the middle of night? Had there been a fire? some mishap with horse and carriage?

  Then the answer came to me, clear and direct beyond question, and I instinctively slowed my stride. Mr. Grandin is printing Joseph Smith’s gold Bible. Eugene sets type for it some days. He says that Hyrum brings in the pages, often under cover of night, in small batches. He or another sits at the railing that separates the presses and printing apparatus from the public during the tedious daylight hours. Sits and waits. Sits and watches, for mistakes, for problems—for trouble.

  With a sensation of dread I moved forward, cautiously now. I shrink from the ugliness in men’s voices when they become merciless and hardened. I feel at such times that no power could reach them, no power on heaven or earth. I heard vile things now, hurled against Joseph Smith and his brothers. But the doors to the printing house were locked, tightly secured, and in their frustration several of the group suggested riding out to the Smith farm together, to drag the “imposter” from his bed and show him what decent folk thought of his kind.

  Decent folk! Eugene must have noticed me, standing apart and alone on the dark street. He suddenly disengaged himself from the others and moved like a tall shadow toward me. A few others began to wander off in various directions, and the group as a whole broke up into fragments.

  Eugene did not speak until he had led me some distance from the others. “I did not think I had awakened you.” There was distress in his voice. “Esther, why did you come?”

  I explained what had happened. “Why did you come?” I asked. “Such men as these, Eugene!”

  He understood my concern and was quick to explain. “I heard murmurings over the past few days and Grandin asked me if I would check the situation out for him, make sure no harm was done.”

  “No harm done! What would have happened if Joseph had been in the hands of those men this night?”

  He felt my trembling and put his arm round my shoulders. “He is no fool, Esther. I believe he is able to take care of himself.” He spoke the words softly, as though he were contemplating their meaning, their implication. “You may as well know,” he continued, “that a meeting is set for this Thursday evening. Many of the leading men of the village are demanding it. They are determined to stop this publication from coming to light.”

  “I do not understand why people are so against it!”

  “They are afraid of it; that’s what I sense. They don’t understand what Joseph Smith’s up to. And because they don’t understand, they’re afraid.”

  I knew he spoke truly. But my ire was stirring as I walked home on his arm. “Cannot this mass meeting be avoided?”

  “No. There is not a chance of it.”

  “Will things be mean and ugly?”

  “They may very well be.”

  We continued in silence. Neither of us had any answers. We felt a depressive weight on our spirits occasioned by the scene we had passed through. A sudden thought came to me. “Heavens, Eugene, will Gerard Whittier and Theodora’s father be there?”

  “Most assuredly they will,” he answered. “They are among the men most opposed.”

  I wondered for the first time what Tillie thought of such things. I knew Georgie’s views on the matter, but really no one else’s—except, perhaps, those of my father, who had always treated the Smith boys with compassion; who, indeed, liked and respected them, and was not the type to be party to mischief, jealousy, and deceit.

  I made it a point to visit each of my friends before Thursday and bring up the subject with them.

  “Gerard has said nothing to me,” Tillie responded. “I generally know almost nothing, Esther, of his affairs. He considers me—beneath them.” She spoke the words with no malice and less distress than she would have a year before. “Besides, I have been ill, and that keeps me even more isolated from him.”

  Isolated from. A terrible term to use about one’s husband. “Remember how we felt when we were
girls, when Joseph had his vision?”

  “Supposedly had his vision,” she amended. “Surely you do not believe such things could really happen.”

  “I do not know what I believe. Except that people ought to be left alone and not hounded—and that I know very little as far as the knowledge of the world is concerned. How can I say what things might be?”

  Our conversation left me dissatisfied, so I approached Phoebe with some caution. She was more prosaic, more open to suggestion than Tillie had been.

  “I do remember liking Joseph and his brothers and sisters. I remember that he was one of the few boys I felt I could trust not to tease or plague me. He came to my aid once, do you know, when I was about seven years old. I fell in the mud. I looked up and saw him standing there, but he was not laughing at me, as the other boys were. He picked up my books—I remember he wiped the mud off my slate with his own hands. Then he helped me out and insisted on taking my shoes and cleaning them in the tall grasses. I have never forgotten that.”

  “It is how I remember him, too,” I said. But my mind jumped suddenly forward to our meeting in the cemetery shortly after my brother, Nathaniel, had died. There was a dignity in his presence, and a kindness that reached out to one—

  “I shall not go to the meeting,” Phoebe was saying, “for nothing will be accomplished there; nothing of value, that is. Safety in numbers. They mean to state their purposes and garner support.”

  “I believe you are right. Would I be a fool to attempt to oppose them?”

  “Oh, Esther, you would!”

  I had to smile at her earnestness. “Do you know what Simon thinks of the matter?”

  “We have never discussed it. Between running the feed store and farming both his fields and his father’s, he seldom has a minute to spare.”

  We visited a few more moments about this and that. When I left her I still felt a determination to attend this meeting and see what took place for myself.

  Phoebe was right. I had not been aware of a portion of what was going on around me. I did not even know that Abner Cole had pilfered some of the pages of Joseph’s book and offered them to subscribers in his newspaper, the Reflector, attempting to discredit the work. There were many in the crowd who were angry that the ex- justice of the peace had been exposed and forced to abandon his endeavor because it was both unethical and illegal; they cared not a farthing for that!