Pillar of Light

by Gerald N. Lund

  Finally his head came up a fraction. Kathryn was directly in his line of sight, but he forced himself to look past her. “All right,” he said in a low voice.

  Jessica raised the paper, read through it quickly to herself, and then, touched again with wonder at the gift given to this boy who sat before her, she began to read out loud.

  Friends

  Friendship’s treasured touch

  Is sometimes lost,

  When wind and tide and circumstance

  Demand their cost.

  Sails that billow wide,

  Saltwater spray,

  A thousand miles of ocean now

  Divide friends’ play.

  Lonely, aching heart—

  But resolute;

  No turning back to ease the pain—

  Life’s bitter fruit.

  Years spin on and on,

  And mem’ries fade,

  But somewhere deep inside remains

  The loss, unpaid.

  But seas that draw apart

  Can reunite,

  And wind and tide and circumstance

  Undo the slight.

  Floating treasure chest

  Upon the tide;

  I open up and to my joy,

  The jewel’s inside.

  Friend returned again—

  Who cares the cost?

  More beautiful and dear to me

  Than what was lost.

  Jessica finished, and folded the paper again. The room was very still. Then, with a stifled sob, Kathryn rose and stumbled blindly toward the door. Instantly, Jennifer Jo was up and hurrying after her. As the door slammed shut again, Will, stiff-lipped and grim, stood and followed them out. A little dazed by this unexpected result, Jenny Pottsworth stared at the closed door.

  Jessica was sitting up in bed with the lamp out but the door open. Jennifer Jo tiptoed by in her nightdress, carrying a candle in its holder. Kathryn was directly behind her. “I’m awake,” Jessica called out. “Come in for a minute.”

  As they came in, Jessica moved over and patted the coverlet. “Come on, it’s time for some girl talk.”

  Kathryn crawled up on one side of her; Jennifer Jo set the candle down on the dressing table and sprawled out across the foot of the bed where she could look at both of them at the same time.

  “How are you doing?” Jessica asked.

  Kathryn blushed a little. “I’m sorry, Jessie. I didn’t mean to walk out of class today.”

  Jessica shushed her. “That’s not what I want to talk about.”

  “What?”

  “I want to talk about houses.”

  “Houses?” Kathryn echoed.

  “Yes.”

  “What kind of houses?”

  Jessica smiled faintly. “The houses that we live in.”

  Both girls looked a little perplexed. This was what she felt was so important? But Kathryn pulled the covers up around her shoulders and snuggled in on one side of Jessica. Jennifer Jo liked that idea and moved up to do the same on the other side. Finally settled, they looked up at her.

  “All right,” Jessica began, “now tell me about houses. Do they all look alike? Are they all the same?”

  “Of course not,” Kathryn replied. “There are all different kinds.”

  “There are about as many different houses as there are people,” Jennifer Jo added.

  “That’s exactly right.” That was the answer Jessica was hoping for. “Now, let me ask you another question. How do you think Heavenly Father would feel if we chose to like a person based only on the house in which the person lived?”

  “That would be terrible,” Kathryn blurted out instantly.

  “Terrible,” Jennifer Jo agreed.

  “Yes, it would be. I think we all see that who lives in the house is much more important than the house itself, right?”

  “Right!”

  She reached across Jennifer Jo and took the Bible from the small night table beside her bed. “Let me read you something the Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians.” She flipped the pages quickly to where she had a small paper as a bookmark. “It’s in the sixth chapter of First Corinthians. Here is what he says: ‘Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you?’ ”

  She shut the book and set it on the table again. “Now,” she said, looking down at Kathryn. “Tell me what that means.”

  “Well,” Kathryn began, her face twisting as she thought, “I think it means that our bodies are like a temple, a place where the Holy Ghost dwells.”

  “Yes, that’s good. Jennifer Jo?”

  “Well, a temple is a holy and sacred place.”

  “Excellent. And what do we call the temple? Don’t we also say it is a house?”

  Jennifer Jo saw it immediately. “Yes. We call it the house of God.”

  “So if your body is a temple, and the temple is a house, then we could also say your body is . . .” She stopped, leaving it for them to finish.

  “A house,” Kathryn exclaimed.

  “That’s right. Our bodies are simply the houses in which our spirits live. Agreed?”

  Jennifer Jo guessed where all this was leading now. “And all of our houses are different, aren’t they?”

  “They certainly are,” Jessica answered. Now, very softly, she asked the crucial question. “But which is more important? The house we live in, or the person that lives in that house?”

  “The person.” It came out as one answer from the both of them.

  Kathryn was looking at Jessica strangely, and it was to her that Jessica now addressed her next question. “Jenny Pottsworth’s spirit was sent to a very lovely house, wasn’t it?”

  “It certainly was,” Kathryn said woefully.

  “And you feel more like you’re living in a log cabin, right?” Jessica asked, gently smiling now.

  Kathryn’s nose wrinkled. “More like a sod shanty, I think.”

  “Kathryn!” Jennifer Jo exclaimed.

  “Well, it’s true! Jenny makes me feel like a dingy little hut.”

  Jessica broke in with another question. “Do you think the person who lives in Jenny’s house is a nice person?”

  There was a long silence. Finally, Kathryn began to nod slowly. “Yes. Jenny is nice. In fact, she’s so nice, I hate her.”

  Jessica laughed aloud.

  “Well, I do,” Kathryn said mournfully. “I wish I could say she was awful and selfish and . . . but she’s not. She’s a good person. A lovely person.”

  “For many, many years,” Jessica said quietly, “I believed I lived in one of the plainest houses God had ever created. I would barely look people in the eye because I was sure I was so homely and plain.”

  “But you don’t feel that way anymore?” Kathryn said, her eyes wide and searching.

  “No,” Jessica replied with simple frankness, “I don’t. And here’s a lesson for you. The house I live in is still the same, just getting a little fatter and picking up more wrinkles, but it’s still the same old house I’ve always lived in. But how I feel about that house is very different now.”

  “Why?” Jennifer Jo asked, surprised that Jessica had ever had such feelings about herself.

  “Because I was fortunate enough to marry a man named John Griffith.” Her voice faltered for a moment; then she went on more slowly. “You see, Kathryn, John was a man who cared more about what kind of woman lived in this house of mine than he did about the house itself. Thank goodness.” She straightened and there was a sudden intensity in her eyes. “And because of his feelings toward me—not my house, but me!—I came to feel beautiful.”

  “You are beautiful,” Kathryn said loyally.

  Jennifer Jo smiled, then slipped her arm through Jessica’s and laid her head against her shoulder. “That’s how Matthew makes me feel too, Jessie.”

  Jessica nodded, then turned fully now to Kathryn. “I want you to think about that, about your house. You are a lovely person outside and inside, Kathryn McIntire. I know you don’t think y
ou are as pretty as Jenny, but you have a special beauty all of your own. But that doesn’t really matter. You just worry about the woman you’ve got living in your house. If you do that, sooner or later some man—maybe Peter, maybe someone you’ve not even met yet—will see that woman and fall in love with her. And when that happens, nothing else will matter.”

  A movement out the window caught Will’s eye and he looked up. He came out of his chair with a jerk, winning himself a startled look from Jeb Parkinson, Joshua’s office foreman. But Will didn’t see that at all. All he saw was that Jenny Pottsworth was crossing the street, heading directly for the freight office.

  Moving quickly, almost in a panic, he brushed his hair back out of his eyes and looked down at his clothes. He had spent most of the morning out in the stable helping two of the hands fix a broken wagon wheel. There was a streak of grease across one pant leg, and his shirt front was smudged in several places. He rubbed at it hard, cursing his luck. There was nothing he could do now.

  His eye fell on the desk. It was a jumble of papers. He began pushing them together, trying to get them into some kind of order. He grabbed the pen and inkwell and moved them to the front. He shoved an empty coffee cup and the stained paper beneath it into a drawer.

  Parkinson was staring at him. “You all right, Will?”

  Will started to turn, but there was a knock at the door. He jumped forward, cracking one knee against the desk. “I’ll get it.”

  When he opened the door, Jenny was standing there, all bundled up in her coat, a scarf wrapped around the lower part of her face so that all that showed were those large, soft blue eyes. “Oh,” he said, feigning surprise. “Jenny, it’s you.”

  She pulled the scarf down, away from her mouth. “Good morning, Will.” She was smiling up at him, and her head was partly cocked to one side in that way she had which Will completely adored. “I was hoping you would be here. May I speak with you for a few moments?”

  “Of course.” Will started to step back inside, but then he heard Parkinson chuckling behind him. He changed his mind in a hurry and came out onto the boardwalk porch. “Uh . . . why don’t we walk?”

  There was a quick look of disappointment. “I have to go to the store. I was just on my way to work.”

  “I’ll walk you there, then,” he said. He grabbed his coat from the peg behind the door. “Jeb, I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  There was an outright laugh. “Take your time, Will.”

  He shut the door behind him and put on his coat, and they started back up the street. She glanced up at him, suddenly shy. “I didn’t mean to take you away from work.”

  He brushed that aside. “It’s fine.” He glanced down and saw that both of her hands were stuffed into a woolen muff, and he felt a little stab of disappointment. Unless she brought them out, there was no way to hold her hand naturally.

  “How come you haven’t been in school?”

  He slowed for a moment, then shrugged. “With Pa in Wisconsin, I thought I’d better spend more time here at the freight office.” He was watching her closely out of the corner of his eye to see her response. His answer was partially true. Joshua had taken three men and headed north two days after Christmas, eager now to see if he could get something started during this winter season. Once spring came, logging operations would stop. With him gone, Will did spend more time at the freight yard, but he had still found time for school until that day, almost two weeks ago now, when Jenny had stood and asked Jessica to read Peter’s poem.

  But if Jenny noticed the discrepancy she let it pass. “Jessica asked if I would tell you that we’re going to be talking about China next week.”

  “Really?”

  She nodded. “She would like your help.”

  “Well,” he started slowly, “Pa is supposed to be back any day now.”

  “Good, I’ll tell her.” There was a brief pause, and then she spoke again. “I’m sorry about what happened in school the other day.”

  He came out of his thoughts with a jerk, then shrugged. He didn’t really care to discuss it. “It’s no big problem.”

  She ducked her head again, and as he looked at her, he was surprised to see that her cheeks had colored a little. “Would you like to come to supper tomorrow night?”

  He stopped. She looked up at his face and laughed delightedly. “Does that surprise you so?” she exclaimed. “I can cook, you know. Mother Steed and Caroline have been teaching me.”

  “It’s not that, it’s just . . .” He nodded emphatically. “Yes, I would like that very much.”

  “Good.” She withdrew her hands out of her muff and pulled the scarf up over her mouth and nose again. “Well, I’m late. I’d better run. Tomorrow night at seven, all right?” She touched his arm briefly, then darted off.

  He watched her go, a little dazed, very much pleased, and already starting to feel a swell of anticipation.

  By the standards of New York, Boston, or Philadelphia, the meal wasn’t much. In Nauvoo’s slowly growing prosperity it was fine—nothing spectacular, but fine. By the standards of the working-class poor in England, however, it was a rich feast, and Jenny reveled in the cooking of it. In a way, though it meant a great deal more work for her, she was glad that her mother would not be home from delivering laundry until just before supper time. A week before, the family had been talking about finding some maple trees to tap. Nathan promised to give a bucket or two to the Pottsworths so they could make some syrup. “Make syrup?” Jenny had asked in surprise. “You mean it doesn’t come out as syrup?” Will had laughed right out loud at that. What girl didn’t know enough to boil down maple sap into maple syrup? It had stung Jenny, and so tonight it would give her great satisfaction to let it casually slip that she had cooked the meal completely on her own.

  The main course was a piece of venison haunch, bought from a farmer who shot deer and sold the meat. It hung from a chain within the fireplace, over the “spider,” a three-legged metal pot in which the makings of a stew—water, sliced carrots, potatoes, and turnips—were already starting to bubble. When the drippings from the meat finally stopped, Jenny put the heavy black lid on the spider, then with tongs carefully packed it with coals from the fire.

  While that cooked, she carefully swept off the hearth of the fireplace, then molded small patties from a wet, sticky cornmeal paste. Flour was expensive and still in limited supply among the Saints, but the ubiquitous cornmeal was not only cheap but very forgiving when it came to cooking it. Laying the patties in a neat row along the hottest part of the hearth, she then covered them with hot wood ashes and left them to bake. When they were done, she would wash them off, and these “ash cakes” would serve as their biscuits for the meal.

  That task done, Jenny took the rest of the cornmeal and mixed it in a bowl of water. The resulting gruel, when poured into a pan of boiling water, would make “hasty pudding,” a legacy from New England that Mary Ann showed her how to do. The hasty pudding, sweetened with honey or some of last year’s maple syrup, would be their dessert.

  Done at last, she looked at the small clock above the fireplace. “Oh, dear,” she said. It was nearly quarter of seven already.

  Will caught himself humming as he rounded the corner of his father’s corral and started down the snowy path that led to the door of the Pottsworth cabin. He was in a jubilant mood. After weeks of being jerked back and forth like a two-man saw cutting through a log, he felt that things were finally looking up. Jenny Pottsworth liked him. He knew that. He sensed it as clearly as he sensed when a horse was skittish or when a wagonload was about to shift. And that left him feeling wonderful.

  From the moment she had stood beside him on the railing of the riverboat and asked him to teach her about America, Will had been lost. The eight-day trip up the Mississippi was one long, wonderful experience. He loved to watch her as she eagerly drank in the landscape around her. He loved the way she dropped her h’s and trilled her r’s. He loved to hear her call her mother “Mum,” and the way h
er brows furrowed when she talked about her life in the textile factory. When he spoke of China, or described what it was like to climb the mast in a driving gale, or talked about hitching six span of oxen to one of the big Conestoga wagons, she watched him with such open awe that it left him totally intoxicated.

  And then they had come to Nauvoo. He went from ecstasy to ordeal in a matter of one day. For all of his experience, for all of his travels, for all the fact that in the last two years Will had matured significantly beyond his natural age, he felt totally outclassed by Peter. There was only six weeks’ difference in their ages, with Will being the older. But Peter was gentle and refined. Peter could express himself so precisely and so artfully. Peter wrote poems!

  He shook his head and snorted softly in disgust, his breath making a cloud around his head in the cold night air. But then immediately his mood lifted again. Jenny had invited him to supper. Her eyes had danced with anticipation when she asked him, and had been filled with pleasure when he accepted. So all in all, Will was in a mood for humming. In fact, were he not almost to the door now, he might have burst into a lusty song of rejoicing.

  He stepped up onto the small porch and rapped sharply. There was a sound from inside, then Mrs. Pottsworth opened the door.

  “Good evening, Mrs. Pottsworth,” he said, taking off his hat.

  “Hello, Will,” she said, stepping back. “Come in.”

  “Thank you.” Will followed her through the door, then stopped dead. He gaped in openmouthed shock. Peter Ingalls was sitting on a chair near the fully laid table. Peter looked up, then shot out of his chair, his astonishment as great as Will’s. And then in one flash of perfect clarity, Will understood. In one blinding, bitter instant, he saw it all. The dinner wasn’t for him. It was for them. Peter and Will. Poor, helpless competitors brought and laid at the altar of their adoration.

  Jenny was at the fireplace, bent over and stirring something in the big black kettle. She turned and straightened. As if time were suspended, Will saw her beauty, saw the color in her cheeks from the heat of the flames, saw the firelight dancing in the gold of her hair. Her eyes lit up and she dropped the wooden spoon into the pot she was stirring. “Oh, Will, it’s you,” she said. She started toward him.