Pillar of Light

by Gerald N. Lund

  “Papa said the soldiers were gonna be first,” she wailed. “I don’t want to miss the soldiers.”

  “Yeah, Grandpa.” Young Joshua, just fourteen months older than his sister, was usually much more mature, but now there was a touch of petulance on his face too. “Pa says there’s gonna be cavalry. We can’t miss that.”

  “Children, children,” Benjamin laughed. “We have plenty of time. We’re not going to miss anything.”

  Emily’s face mirrored sharp disappointment. There were sacred responsibilities here that were not being fulfilled. With a toss of her head and a sniff of disgust, she stomped away. “I’ll just get them myself.”

  Her brother gave his grandfather a sharp, challenging look, but when it was obvious he wasn’t going to take action he spun on his heel. “Wait, Emmy, I’m coming too.”

  Joshua came out of the cabin just as Emily and young Joshua came stalking toward him. He stepped aside, holding the door for his niece and nephew. His look was one of faint surprise, then amusement. Emily didn’t so much as give him a passing glance. “Mama!” came the plaintive cry as she entered the cabin. “Hurry up!”

  The elder Joshua saw his father. There was a momentary look of surprise, and then he walked over to join him. “Where’s Mother?”

  “Helping Jessica get the picnic lunch ready. I thought I’d come and see if I could hurry things along here, but the children said you were nearly ready, so I thought I’d just wait out here.”

  Joshua nodded, then turned to look back at the cabin. “What’s the matter with Emily?”

  Benjamin chuckled softly. “She thinks she’s going to miss the parade.”

  Joshua laughed now too. “She is so excited. She was up at six and has been cracking the whip over us ever since. I think I’m going to take her back to Independence with me and make her one of my drivers.”

  “She’s a strong-willed one, that’s for sure.”

  Joshua nodded. “It serves Lydia right to get one who’s just like her.”

  Just then Caroline came out the door. Will was with her, carrying Savannah in his arms. For a moment they squinted at the brightness of the sunshine, then saw the two men standing near the front gate. Savannah saw them too, for instantly she held out her arms and started crying, “Gampa! Gampa!”

  Pleased more than a little, Benjamin dropped to one knee as Will put her down and Savannah raced to him and threw herself into his arms. He hugged her tightly and nuzzled his face in against her cheek. “Hello, little sweetheart.” He scooped her up and stood to face Caroline.

  “Mornin’, Caroline. Mornin’, Will. Are you ready for a great day?”

  “I am,” Will said in disgust. “If we can ever get Olivia to stop primping.”

  Caroline rolled her eyes in mock despair. “The curse of the Steed men—waiting for the women in the family to make themselves presentable.”

  “Well,” her son grumbled, “she’s been in front of the mirror all morning.”

  Benjamin smiled gravely. “After a time, Will, one learns patience.”

  Joshua laid a hand on his stepson’s shoulder. “Speaking of the Steed men, Will made me a very happy man yesterday afternoon.”

  “Oh? Why’s that?” Benjamin asked.

  Caroline was watching her oldest closely now, her eyes filled with warm pride and affection. “Do you want to tell Grandpa, Will?”

  Will pulled back his shoulders as he turned to his grandfather. “Olivia and me, we want to be adopted so Pa is our real pa. We want to become Steeds.”

  “Really?” Benjamin exclaimed.

  “Yes,” Will said simply. “We’re gonna do it as soon as we get back to Independence.”

  Benjamin started to speak, then had to blink quickly. Finally he cleared his throat. “What a wonderful thing,” he said quietly. “Then that means you’ll really be my grandson.”

  Will was beaming. “Yes, Grandpa. I would like that.”

  “I would like that too,” Benjamin said. “Very much.”

  “It is a wonderful present for us,” Caroline said, stepping to Will and giving him a quick hug. “It has made us very happy.”

  “Very happy,” Joshua murmured, looking deep into the boy’s eyes.

  Embarrassed a little now by the depth of their emotions, they fell quiet. Benjamin finally turned and looked toward the cabin. “Are they about ready in there?”

  Caroline nodded. “The baby spit up, so Lydia had to change her again, but they should be right out.”

  Again they fell silent. Then, after a moment, Benjamin gave Joshua a sideward glance. “How did it go last night?”

  Both Joshua and Caroline spoke together. “It was fine,” he said. “It was wonderful,” was her response.

  “Joseph has a very nice family,” Joshua went on. “They’re very well-behaved children. I was impressed.”

  “And Emma,” Caroline broke in, “what a lovely and gracious woman!”

  “Yes, she is, isn’t she?” Benjamin agreed, with relief. He took his coin purse from his pocket and held it out for Savannah. She took it and began turning it over and over, intrigued by the soft clinking of the coins and the shifting weight within it. Finally he looked up again. “Young Joshua said you didn’t get home until late.”

  Caroline laughed. “Yes. It was nearly ten o’clock. I couldn’t believe it. Joseph and Emma made us feel so comfortable, we just talked and talked.”

  “Oh.” He kept his voice casual and disinterested. “What did you talk about?”

  Joshua hooted softly at his father. “All right, you win. Joseph didn’t try to preach at us.”

  Benjamin nodded in satisfaction. After they had returned home the previous afternoon and Joshua told Caroline about the invitation, Joshua started waffling about going. After the role Joseph had played in reuniting Joshua with his family, Joshua was sure Joseph was going to try and get him converted to Mormonism and make the reconciliation complete. The whole family had protested, vowing that Joseph was not that way, but Joshua hadn’t believed them. Joshua owed Joseph big. It was too good an opportunity for Joseph to pass up. And so the argument had seesawed back and forth until Caroline stood up, gave Joshua a long look, and said simply, “Joshua, we are going, and that settles the matter.”

  “Joseph’s not that way,” Benjamin said now. “He really respects a person’s right to believe what he wishes. Or not to believe, for that matter.”

  “Well, there was one point where he talked religion,” Joshua said.

  “Only because I asked him a question,” Caroline retorted.

  “What question was that?” Benjamin asked.

  Caroline suddenly looked a little embarrassed. “Some of the people down in Jackson County say that Joseph Smith claims to be God. I didn’t want to offend him, but I asked him if that was true.”

  “I’ll bet he laughed right out loud at that,” Benjamin chortled.

  Caroline was a little surprised. “Yes, that’s exactly what he did. He wasn’t offended at all.”

  “And so, what else did he say?”

  “I know it’s silly, but since everyone calls you Mormons, I’ve just thought all along that was the name of your church. He told us that was a nickname, from your Book of Mormon, that the full name of the Church is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He then got very serious. He said that name was very important, because it showed that this was Christ’s church. It isn’t Joseph’s church. He is only the Lord’s prophet, called to direct his work on the earth. Christ is the head of it and the center of all you believe.”

  Joshua was frowning slightly by the time she finished, but Caroline was not looking at him and did not notice. Benjamin was pleased with the fact that even now as she retold the conversation, she seemed impressed with what Joseph had told them. “That is exactly how we believe,” he said earnestly. “We love Brother Joseph, but we worship the Lord.”

  Caroline now seemed to sense Joshua’s disapproval. “But,” she went on, “once he had answered my question, t
he subject of religion did not come up again.”

  “No,” Joshua admitted grudgingly. “He really was a very pleasant and thoughtful host.”

  “He’s one of the most congenial men I’ve ever met,” Caroline said. “It was a delightful evening.”

  “Good,” Benjamin said. He was silent for a moment, then turned to his son. When he spoke, his voice was musing. “Joseph made a most unusual statement here a month or so ago. It really shocked us.”

  “What was that?”

  “He said that before this year was over, one of the elders of the Church would have the opportunity to preach a gospel sermon in Jackson County once again.”

  “Really?” Caroline blurted.

  “Yes. I find it difficult to understand how that could be, given the current situation, but . . .” He shrugged.

  Joshua opened his mouth, but just then the door to the cabin opened and Emily came out leading the rest of the family. As they all called out their greetings to Benjamin, Joshua stepped close to his father.

  “Pa,” he said in a low voice, “you know I don’t hold any bad feelings for Joseph anymore.”

  Benjamin’s head came around quickly. “Yes, I know that.”

  “So tell him from me, as a friend now, that that would not be a good idea. They’ll kill any Mormon who steps foot across the river.”

  * * *

  By the summer of 1838, the Mormon population in northern Missouri had passed five or six thousand people. That number went up almost daily as the Saints from branches of the Church in the South and the East and from Canada left their homes to join the main body of the Saints. Lying about sixty miles north of Jackson County, Far West was the largest city, with almost half of all the Mormons living there. But other settlements, like Adam-ondi-Ahman to the north in Daviess County and Haun’s Mill out to the east, were growing rapidly as well. And more and more homesteads were springing up out on the open prairie.

  Joshua Steed had come through Far West for the first time in April. He had been surprised then. The newspapers talked about the rapid growth of the Mormons in the north, but he had not been prepared to see a whole city sprung up on what had been, just a few months earlier, empty countryside. Since his arrival on Monday, the surprise had deepened even further. In the three months since his last visit, there had been visible and startling growth. Buildings were going up everywhere. Lumber wagons rattled past constantly. The sounds of hammer and saw were almost omnipresent. And in any direction one looked, the long prairie grass had surrendered to the plow. The Mormons were transforming this portion of the Great Plains into a garden spot.

  But even after having witnessed all that, Joshua was still dumbfounded by what he was seeing now. As the Steed family moved slowly toward the end of the main street that had been designated as the assembly point, it was as if they had become part of some vast tributary system in which every spring and fountain, every rivulet, brook, and creek were feeding into a growing stream of people, combining and joining and swelling until they became one mighty river of humanity. There was no way to estimate accurately, but he guessed that virtually every one of those five or six thousand people was converging on Far West this morning.

  Somehow Joshua had gotten it into his mind that Mormons all carried a dreary sameness about them. Now he saw how far from the truth that notion was. There were the tall and there were the short. There were the lean and the plump. Some had hair as black as tar; others were as blond as bleached muslin. Most of the faces were pleasant and wreathed with smiles, but here and there he saw the pinched look of the worriers, the scowls of the perpetual whiners, and the deeply lined faces of those who had seen sorrow and tragedy.

  They came as families for the most part, with children as numerous as chicks in the barnyard. They came in wagons and they came on foot. They came with shoes and they came without. Some were clothed in store-bought or tailor-made suits; others sported homespun shirts and deer-hide suspenders. They wore sunburned faces and cracked lips, calluses thick as a twenty-dollar gold piece, pants worn shiny at the knees, or dresses which had been washed and ironed and patched, then washed and ironed again.

  Joshua turned to Caroline in wonder. “Can you believe this? I always thought Jackson County drew a crowd for the Fourth of July, but this . . .” He swept out one arm, trying to take it all in.

  Caroline was equally impressed. “We never saw the likes of it in Georgia either.”

  Nathan and Lydia were walking beside Joshua and Caroline. Lydia carried the baby. Nathan held young Nathan in his arms. Lydia leaned forward so she could see Joshua. “Remember, it’s not just the holiday bringing them in.”

  “Oh, yes,” Caroline said, “the laying of the cornerstones. I’d forgotten that.”

  Joshua nodded but didn’t answer. In actuality, he would have been much more pleased if it were only the Fourth of July celebration. The thoughts of being in the middle of a religious service left him feeling a little uneasy.

  Matthew, Peter, and Will were walking on the other side of Joshua and Caroline. Matthew joined in the conversation. “But they’re not all Mormons,” he said. “I expect ’bout every man, woman, and child in the county has come in.” He grinned, his blue eyes filled with fun. “Up here, there’s not much going on, so the old settlers will even come in for a Mormon party.”

  * * *

  “Oh,” Rebecca cried, pointing, “there’s Mary Smith.”

  “Who?” Derek asked, looking around, trying to see who it was she had singled out of this sea of people.

  “Hyrum’s wife, Mary Smith. Come on, I want to say hello to her.” She took him by the hand and looked back over her shoulder at her mother. “We’ll meet you by the temple site.”

  Derek pulled a face. Since word had gone out about his and Rebecca’s engagement, he had been dragged off by Rebecca and Mary Ann to more than one introduction where he then stood around feeling like a fool while the women talked about him as if he were an ox on display at the sale yard. He definitely did not find these to be enjoyable encounters.

  Sensing his reluctance, Rebecca tugged on his hand. “Come on, you old stick-in-the-mud,” she laughed. “Mary’s not going to bite you.”

  “I know that. It’s just that—”

  “She’s British too, you know.”

  “She is?”

  “Yes. She and her sister moved to Canada to live with their brother. She was one of those that Nathan and Parley Pratt converted on their mission to Toronto.”

  “Oh,” he said, brightening a little. “Mary Fielding. Her brother is Joseph Fielding. He came to England with Elder Kimball and Elder Hyde.”

  “Yes. He’s still over there in fact.”

  Derek felt a little better now. “I’ve seen her once or twice since coming here, but I’ve never really met her.”

  “Well, now you will. Even though they are quite a bit older than me, when she and her sister Mercy came to Kirtland from Canada last summer, we became best friends.” She was searching the crowd now. “There she is.” She raised a hand and started waving. “Mary! Mary!”

  Mary Fielding had been thirty-six and destined in everyone’s mind to be an old maid when she moved to Kirtland in the summer of 1837. Attractive and well educated, she became a live-in governess for some of the more well-to-do families in the city. Then in October, while Hyrum and Joseph were out of state on Church business, Hyrum Smith’s wife, Jerusha, died eleven days following the birth of their sixth child. A few days after the two brothers returned in mid-December, while Hyrum was still grieving over his loss, Joseph said it was the Lord’s will that Hyrum marry the English convert. Stunned but obedient, Hyrum had sought her out and explained what had happened. No less shocked than Hyrum, Mary Fielding nevertheless believed Joseph was a prophet and accepted the will of the Lord. She and Hyrum were married a few days later on Christmas Eve.

  She was a relatively tall woman, with long dark hair that she usually wore pulled back and tied in a bun at the crown of her head. A woman of unshaka
ble faith and deep spiritual leanings, she was seen by many as somewhat somber of nature. But those, like Rebecca, who knew her well knew that beneath the outward English reserve was a keen—though dry—wit; a natural love for life; a penchant for rollicking fun, given the right setting and group; and a warm compassion for those in need. In the six months since her marriage, she had won the respect and love of most of the Saints in Caldwell County.

  The two women hugged each other tightly as Derek watched. The crowd flowed around them. Derek heard a few people grumble at the blockage of their movement, but when they saw who it was, they smiled and called out their greetings.

  “Where are the children?” Rebecca asked as they fell into step with one another, Derek right behind, and began to move with the crowd.

  “Mother Smith has the baby. The others are with Joseph’s children and Eliza.” Eliza Snow lived with the Smiths and helped Emma care for the children. Mary stuck out her stomach, which Derek now saw was quite round, and patted it firmly. “I guess they thought my carrying one baby was enough for right now.”

  “How are you feeling, Mary?”

  There was a soft chuckle, nearly lost in the noise of the crowd. “Very heavy with child. And I’ve still got four more months to go. Or maybe I should say, four more months to grow.” Derek was content to tag along. He was listening carefully to Mary’s voice. It felt wonderful to hear English spoken properly again. When Mary suddenly stopped and took him by the arm, it startled him. Immediately she pulled him across the stream of people until they were out of the main flow.

  “There now,” she said soberly, “let’s get a look at this man you have reeled in for yourself, Sister Rebecca.”