Palmyra

by Susan Evans McCloud

  “This is what comes of leaving an infant who cannot understand your sudden removal from her existence.”

  “Eugene said he has spent part of every day with her and taken her home to sleep in his bed with him every night.”

  “As if that is beneficial for the child! Besides, Eugene is not Lavinia’s mother. And Eugene did not leave her.”

  “Do not torture me with details,” I pleaded. “Certainly you know how hard this was for me, Tillie! Every day I was away from her was like a little death.”

  “Now that you have returned, do you still believe it was necessary?”

  “Yes, most certainly. Not only necessary, but good.”

  She waved her hand at me, a short, imperious gesture. “I do not wish to hear the details, Esther; they will only frustrate and anger me.”

  “Please, Tillie—this is Georgie! Let me share our days with you, let me—”

  “I cannot, Esther. Perhaps later. Let us calm the baby and talk of your precious darling right now.”

  Phoebe, on the other hand, was as eager for every detail as I had thought she would be. Some choice bits I repeated for her, just so we both could savor them and laugh or cry together. When we got to the matter of religion and I told her the things that were happening, the persecutions Joseph Smith suffered, she seemed to be truly distressed.

  “What is it, dearie?” I asked. “There is something you are not telling me.” It was only a guess. But perhaps she was tired of dissembling. She said, winding the thread she was sewing with round her finger, “I read the Book of Mormon shortly after it was published, Esther.”

  I tried to conceal my amazement. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “There were many reasons, if you remember. But that is not all. I was baptized shortly before the Saints left for Kirtland.”

  My hand went up to my mouth. “Oh, dear. Georgie, of course, knows this?” She nodded. “What about Simon?”

  “He knows. I have been doing my best to convert him. I have stressed the teachings that are not easy for me, but ought to appeal to him most.”

  “Which are?”

  “Our belief in the eternal nature of families. Not some vague heaven where we all exist like winged angels who play on harps and praise God. Joseph teaches something more literal and far more beautiful.”

  “And even this has not won him?” I never cease to marvel at the true selflessness in Phoebe’s nature. When I am around her I feel humbled by it, by her ability to forget herself in serving others, not worrying about what the consequences might prove to be.

  She shook her head sadly. “I think it is religion altogether. He is not drawn to it; at least the depths of his need do not draw him, nor the depths of a burning desire to know!”

  My heart trembled for her as for a delicate bird, beautiful as gossamer, swooping too near a flame that may singe its frail wings, or even suck it in to destruction. Why do we too often love, I thought almost savagely, where it is not wise? The highest within her was lonely, waiting for a soul mate to understand and respond to those precious things that were locked yet within her heart. Always giving. Never questioning, never demanding.

  “Esther, there are tears in your eyes.”

  “I’m sorry.” I wiped at them clumsily with my handkerchief.

  “I love him, you know. It is all right, because I truly love him.”

  “No, it isn’t. It is not right for him to be less than he could be—so much less than you, Phoebe!”

  “Perhaps you are right. Perhaps it isn’t. But I love him, nevertheless. And I understand what it is that frightens and stops him.”

  I sighed in frustration at her nobility. “What will you do now?”

  “Keep trying. Perhaps this child will help things.”

  “Phoebe!”

  “Yes. I have been well thus far. And I pray every day for a son—Esther, it must be a son!”

  I put my hands out for hers. “I will pray with you,” I promised.

  But as I walked back to my house I wondered how effective my weak prayers would be beside hers and Georgie’s. I felt both slothful and ungrateful as I contemplated my life. When Eugene returned from work I had an exceptionally nice meal ready and waiting. I was determined to appreciate the good qualities in my husband, which I do not always do.

  He was receptive. Ever since my return from Kirtland he had been different somehow. More amorous and attentive; that is natural following a long separation. But there was something more, something very elusive, which I could not identify.

  After Lavinia was asleep in her bed—kissed dozens of times on rosebud mouth, on ear and eyelid and forehead by an adoring mother—I curled into the soft candlelight, like one of Georgie’s cats, with Eugene beside me, content to enjoy the fine evening together. But he sat rather stiffly in his place and said, in a tight, formal voice, “Esther, there is a matter I must discuss with you—something I have been putting off ever since your return.”

  My stomach gave a nervous flip-flop. “That has been nearly two weeks. Is it a thing so difficult to talk about?”

  “Indeed it is.”

  My mind shrank from all the possibilities that sprang up before it. “Tell me now and be done with it, Eugene,” I urged.

  “You will scoff at me, and you will be angry,” he warned me.

  Whatever in the world? “Please, Eugene, tell me. It will be better after you do.”

  Thus he began. And thus I listened to a tale so simple, so amazing, that I would never have guessed at it, never dreamed of it happening, not in a million years.

  “While you were gone—shortly after you left, really—a strange little man came into the newspaper office asking about Joseph Smith. He was disappointed when I told him that the prophet of Palmyra is no longer here. ‘I have come a long distance,’ he said, ‘in order to meet this man.’ ”

  “ ‘You shall have to go a great distance farther yet,’ I responded.

  “ ‘I will, and gladly,’ he said.

  “ ‘Why?’ I asked. He made me more curious, Esther, than some of the others. Though strange in looks and manner, he had a pleasant countenance, and he was well dressed and gave the impression of one to be reckoned with.

  “ ‘There are but few truly extraordinary men born in this world of ours, young man,’ he responded. ‘Joseph Smith is one of them. His influence will be great, and he will be remembered long after you and I, yes, and even our children and our children’s children are dead.’

  “He tipped his hat to me, thanked me politely, and went on his way. I asked some of the other editors if they knew who he was, but none had ever seen him before. For some reason I could not get him out of my mind, and when I came home after a day at work, the wind was blowing something terrible and the yard was scattered with odd bits of debris. And there before me, Esther—”

  He stole a quick glance at my face, to see how I was receiving this. I nodded encouragingly. “Right there at my feet was a copy of Joseph Smith’s Book of Mormon. How did it blow into my yard? I thought, and why?

  “I let it sit, Esther. I did not touch it that night, or the following morning, when it was still there. When I came home from the printing office I had forgotten the book altogether—but there it sat on the door stoop, all brushed off and waiting. I bent over and picked it up and carried it inside with me.”

  I listened in amazement, and bit my tongue to keep from asking, “Why did you do that—when you forbade me the same opportunity of satiating my curiosity?”

  “As I sat down to eat my solitary supper I opened the pages. I only meant to thumb through it, but I was lonely, Esther, and I had all this time on my hands.”

  “Of course,” I murmured. By now all my senses were primed and I was listening carefully.

  “I read for several hours that night, and the following night, and the night after that—until I finished it.” My husband reached over and took my hand. His was trembling and cold as ice. “I read it through from cover to cover, Esther, and I believe what
it says to be true.”

  I could not reply. What reply could I possibly make to him? We looked at each other for a few moments, a bit warily. “I am aware of the unfairness in all this, I am, Esther. I am aware of the irony—most surely of that!” I could feel his agitation through his fingers—but I could also feel his enthusiasm!

  “I did not wish to believe it—I never intended to! You know that, Esther, better than anyone!”

  “Yes,” I replied. “But I was gone tending to my old loved friend, who has gone away with the ‘Mormonites,’ while you—”

  “I know, I know, Esther!” He gazed at me with such anguished appeal in his eyes that I leaned close and brushed his cheek with my lips.

  “You say you ‘believe it.’ Believe what exactly, Eugene? I do not know what those words mean.”

  I could see the struggle play over his features. He wanted so badly to help me understand what he was feeling. “I believe it is what Joseph Smith says it is: a record of ancient people, translated by him. I believe it is scripture, every bit as much as the Bible.”

  “Scripture—in what way?”

  “There are prophets in the book who teach and warn their people. I believe they are—I don’t know how to say it, Esther! I believe they taught their people the words of the Savior. And I believe that Jesus himself visited these people, as it is recorded there.”

  So this is what the Book of Mormon is! I marveled. “I want to read it,” I said. “Will you wait for me to read it before we talk about this further?”

  “By all means,” he agreed.

  The question burning my tongue was, “If this is your belief, what do you intend to do about it?” But I did not dare ask this question, for fear of what his answer might be.

  He was gentle and solicitous with me for the remainder of the evening and for days after that. I read the book when I was alone; I could not bear to do so beneath his veiled scrutiny. When I had questions I was too impatient to suppress, I asked him, and he answered me briefly, and then I returned to my reading.

  Perhaps I went slowly on purpose, drew out the inevitable, considered all points with care. I was afraid. Yes, I was afraid of my own feelings—I will not deny that. I had been to Kirtland, I had seen into the heart of the life this Book of Mormon required of the people who believed in it, and I was afraid.

  And perhaps that fear would have triumphed, if the love in those pages had not been so powerful—that love Georgie had spoken of with such peace and such joy. When the Savior visited the Nephite people following his resurrection, when he took their little ones unto him and blessed them one by one—I felt as they did: the awe and wonder, the adoration and love. And these words, these words made the difference to me:

  He himself also knelt upon the earth; and behold he prayed unto the Father; and the things which he prayed, cannot be written, and the multitude did bear record which heard him. . . . The eye hath never seen, neither hath the ear heard, before, so great and marvellous things as we saw and heard Jesus speak unto the Father; . . . and no one can conceive of the joy which filled our souls at the time we heard him pray for us.

  Had I courage and love enough to face the prospect before me? Dared I turn away?

  Chapter 26

  Palmyra: March 1833

  If the word time is synonymous with anything, it is synonymous with change. As the old year bustled about, sweeping out the cobwebs that had accumulated in corners, in attics, along the eaves, we mortals shuddered before the relentless, onward press of its breath.

  In November, as Eugene and I made our decisions and laid our quiet plans, Alexander lost his balance and fell from a high wagon bed onto which he had been loading lumber. As he slid, trying to catch himself, many of the loosely placed logs slid, too. He hit the solid ground hard, and several heavy lengths of lumber smashed with a punishing weight against him.

  Randolph and the boys managed to get him into the house and laid out on the long kitchen table. He was bleeding profusely from several cuts on his arm and head. When Doctor Ensworth arrived his examination was short and terse. “The blow on the head killed him instantly,” he told Randolph. “Where is that wife of his?”

  Josephine was off in the village with Latisha, purchasing new supplies for the school. “Will you please stay to tell her?” Randolph entreated.

  “I haven’t time for that, my boy,” the doctor replied. “But if I happen upon Esther in town, I’ll send her out.”

  “If you happen upon Josephine?”

  “I shall let her pass. I do not want her falling apart in the streets of Palmyra. She has a right to hear such news in the privacy of her own home.”

  So it happened that the good doctor knocked on my door and told me. “You’d best get out there, Esther. I know you are up to it.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” I said.

  When I arrived at the mill all work had ceased, and the very air about the place hung and sagged like a pall. The boys all sat stiff-backed and sniffling in the parlor. They had helped Randolph move the body, so that it was laid stretched out on the large four-poster bed, the bed Alexander had bought his young wife as a wedding present not so many years before.

  The relief that flooded Randolph’s face when he saw me compensated for any suffering, any burden I might lift from his young shoulders. I gathered the lads together and we spoke a prayer over the body; then I sent them back to their work. I put the pot on to boil and had herbs waiting in a large tea mug: a strong portion of saffron to relieve mind and body, with a little clove to calm her digestion, and rosemary to ease. Then Randolph and I sat down to wait.

  In what was less than an hour by the clock we heard her carriage rattle into the yard. Randolph tensed; I felt myself do the same. When she and Latisha sailed into the house, red-cheeked and high-spirited, I felt like a traitor to have to show her my somber face. She knew at once. She took her hat off slowly, placed it with her gloves on the cherry wood table, then arranged herself in the tall wing-backed chair that was her husband’s favorite.

  “What has happened, Esther?” Her face was white but composed.

  I told her what happened. I told her Alex died instantly, probably painlessly. I expected her usual profusion of tears and wild ravings. “Heaven help me,” she said under her breath, so softly that I had to guess at the words. “How will I go on without him?”

  She rose, in regal slow motion. “Where is he?”

  “Upstairs on his bed.”

  She turned and walked with the same deliberation; she climbed the stairs. I heard the door brush open, then shut with a sound of finality. During those interminable minutes she had never once glanced at either Latisha or Randolph; she had never once met my eyes.

  We buried him with much tender ceremony, in the costliest coffin Josephine could find. She did not weep. She hardly mentioned his name or spoke of him. She was like a figure in a dream. My mother did all the abandoned mourning for her, but Josie remained still, staring out at us all with those lovely, shrouded eyes.

  I grieved for the life and work of such a good man cut short. But I was comforted by the fact that he had regained his wife’s respect and affection during these last remarkable years. She had poured out the profusion of her emotions upon him, at first in gratitude only, I believe. But tenderness, born of true regard, sent up its shy shoots and blossomed and became a blessing to both their lives.

  I thought to myself, as I walked with my arm through my husband’s: This is the last time I shall come to this spot for a burial. What will happen when my father grows old, when he dies? What will happen when my mother’s strength fails her and she lashes out, in her fear and pain, at all about her? What will happen if I am not here?

  I spent long minutes beside every low spot that was dear to me. Eugene stood back a way, understanding and willing to wait. Dear Jane Foster, whom I had so foolishly mistrusted; my little Nathaniel, long sleeping, who had first awakened the stirrings of motherhood in my heart; Emily—Emily! Was your dying a blessing for Phoebe, I won
dered, or only a curse? What would she have done with her life if you were still living today?

  I paused for a moment beside the mound where Alvin Smith was buried. I pulled out a few of my loveliest autumn asters, goldenrod and meadowsweet, wound them into a sort of posy, and placed them upon his grave. I felt as if every pore in my body were silently weeping, silently yearning with pain. I stumbled over to Eugene. My feet felt too heavy to move; all my body felt heavy, as though some weight were pressing it into the ground. He held out his arms to me. With a sob I buried my head against his warm strength, and wept.

  During the days that followed, Randolph refused to leave Josie, even for a few hours. He conducted the work at the mills with an air of efficiency and determination that rallied the men who had been accustomed to only one overseer for many contented years of their lives. He sent the boys into Palmyra on whatever errands were required, even entrusting them with deposits of money to be placed in Alexander’s account in the bank.

  No one questioned his assumed authority; no one questioned his devotion and integrity. Near the beginning of December, before Christmas and the date of her marriage came cruelly to taunt her, he asked Josie to be his wife.

  At first she refused to answer him. She locked herself in her own room for two days; heaven knows what went through her mind! When she came out, she went at once in search of the young man who, for some reason she could not fathom, wished to continue to devote his life to her. She placed her small hand in his and gazed up at him with those clear, somewhat provocative, somewhat child-like eyes.

  “If you are still resolved that this is what you want, what you truly want, then I will marry you, Randolph.”

  Thus one lonely soul was granted true happiness; another, more security, devotion, and love than her unplumbed heart had ever imagined before.