Pillar of Light

by Gerald N. Lund

  “Yes,” she said, with fierce determination. “Yes, the sooner you’re there, the better.”

  As Carlton Rogers backed out of the office at the brickyard and closed the door, a figure out near the low picket fence that separated the yard from the street straightened. “Mr. Rogers?”

  Carl turned. It was almost seven p.m. and nearly full dark. The night was clear and there was a quarter moon, but Carl couldn’t see clearly who it was. “Yes?”

  “May I have a word with you?” The figure came forward swiftly.

  Carl, hand still on the door latch, stiffened just a little. It was the mayor of Nauvoo, Mr. John C. Bennett. Carl’s hand dropped to his side and he turned to face the man as he joined him on the narrow porch. “Evening,” Carl grunted.

  If Bennett noted the lack of cordiality, he gave no sign. Instead, he plunged right into the matter at hand. “Carl, I have—” He stopped, unctuous now. “May I call you Carl? I know so many of the rest of your family, I feel like I know you as well.”

  Carl nodded. They had met before at some general functions, but Bennett’s fawning amiability was highly distasteful to him.

  “I have a letter from your brother-in-law in Wisconsin.”

  “From Joshua?” Carl said in surprise.

  “Yes. This is a matter of the utmost urgency.” He gestured toward the closed door. “May we speak inside, please?”

  When Lydia opened the door of her home about an hour later, she was surprised to see Carl standing there, hat in hand. “Evening,” Carl said.

  “Why, Carl, good evening. Come in.”

  He shook his head. “Thank you, but no. I was wondering if I could borrow your husband for a time.”

  “But didn’t you hear? Nathan left for Wisconsin this afternoon.”

  “Wisconsin? But I was just talking to him yesterday. He said he wasn’t sure when he would be leaving.”

  “You haven’t talked to Melissa?”

  “No. I was working late at the brickyard. I . . . Something came up and I came straight here.”

  “You’d better come in,” she said, stepping back.

  Ten minutes later when Carl left the house again, he walked away very slowly. “Oh, Joshua,” he finally muttered, looking up at the sky, “what have you done?”

  Late into the night and on into the early hours of the morning, Carlton Rogers lay awake beside his sleeping wife, staring up at the ceiling in the darkness. Finally around three a.m., he fell into a fitful sleep. When Melissa awoke about six-thirty, she was amazed to find her husband still in bed beside her. Carl was always up by five or five-thirty, winter or summer. He would slip out of bed, dress, and go out into the main part of the house to read or work on the books or just putter until she finally crossed that long, long bridge between death and life and pulled herself out of bed.

  She went up on one elbow and stared down at him. It was enough. He stirred, groaned softly, then cracked one eye open and peered at her.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  He groaned again and turned over. “I didn’t sleep very well.”

  She lay back down and snuggled up against him. He lifted one arm and drew her to him. “You’re working too hard at the yard, honey,” she said chidingly. “You were there until late last night. You’ve been going early every day.”

  He reached up and put a finger to her lips. “Melissa, there’s something I need to talk to you about.”

  She reached up to pull his hand away, but just then they heard Sarah start to cry down the hall. Melissa turned, sighing. “Let me see to her. I’ll be back.”

  He reached out and caught her hand. “This is really important, Melissa. Can you get breakfast for the children while I shave and dress? Then we can maybe go for a walk, leave the children with young Carl.”

  She gave him a strange look, then finally nodded. “All right.”

  Carl waited until they were clear away from the house before he began. By then, Melissa’s curiosity was spilling over into open impatience. “John C. Bennett came to see me last night,” he said without preamble.

  She stopped dead, as though he had struck her with the flat side of a brick mold. “Oh?” she finally said.

  “Yeah. He told me some things that are pretty disturbing.”

  This time there was an open snort of disgust. “What did he do? Tell you about his private life?”

  He gave her a sharp look. The sarcasm surprised him. By nature Melissa was one of the most tolerant people he knew. She abhorred talking about people in any kind of a negative way. It was one of the things he most loved about her.

  His feelings must have shown in his face, because she turned just a bit defensive. “Well, there are some things I know that you don’t. Someday I’ll tell you about Rebecca’s experience with that man.”

  His eyebrows knitted together and there was a sudden hardness to his face. “Rebecca?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me now.”

  “No, I want to hear what—”

  “Tell me now, Melissa. This is important.”

  So she did. She told about Rebecca’s visit to the office of

  John C. Bennett and what happened there.

  “Did she tell anyone else besides you?”

  “She told Lydia. Lydia told Nathan. Nathan told Joseph. Why, Carl? What is going on? What did Bennett want with you?”

  And so he told her. He told her about Joshua’s letter and how he had specifically asked Bennett to come to Carl and tell him the same story he had told Joshua in January. Carl wasn’t a member of the Church, Joshua said, but he wasn’t a Mormon-hater either. He would be fair-minded about this. There wasn’t time to wait until Joshua returned to investigate Bennett’s charges. Someone had to look into them now.

  Melissa’s mouth was open in disbelief. “And Bennett wants you to . . . ?” She erupted, throwing up her hands. “And just what charges are you supposed to look into?”

  So he told her that too. He outlined Bennett’s accusations against Joseph and the other leaders of the Church, holding back on some of Bennett’s specific language, totally skipping other things he had said, not willing to have them fall on his wife’s ears. Now her anger turned to horror. “Oh, that man! Carl, he is an evil, vile person.”

  “He swears there are others who will back him up in this. Men and women who will testify to what is happening. That’s what he’s asking me to do. Just to listen.”

  Suddenly, Carl swore softly and kicked at the dirt, completely startling his wife. “What is Joshua thinking, for heaven’s sake?”

  “You’re not going to do it, are you, Carl?” Melissa cried in dismay. “You’re not going to listen to those people. You know what they’ll be. They’ll be people who will say exactly what Bennett wants them to say.”

  Carl watched the emotions playing across his wife’s face, and then spoke softly but earnestly. “Melissa, I’ve been awake most of the night thinking about this. So listen to me, and listen to me very carefully. I need you to hear what I’m saying.”

  “If you’re saying that for one minute you’re going to help out in this, I don’t want to listen, Carl. I can’t listen to that.”

  “You have to listen!” he said sharply.

  Finally, she nodded, not looking at him.

  “You know about what happened between Will and Joshua. Lydia told me that she let you read Will’s letter.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s what triggered Joshua’s letter to Bennett, Melissa. Think about that for a minute. Joshua knew all of this back in January, but he’s ignored it until now. Why? Oh, he may have thought he would look into it when he got back, but he did nothing. Not until now. Why?”

  Now she was listening. And thinking. “Because,” she slowly ventured, “he feels like he’s losing his whole family to the Church and he’s looking for something that will help him stop that.”

  “Yes!” He gripped her arm. “And if we just brush this aside, pretend that it’s not happening, or say
that there’s nothing to any of it, what is Joshua going to say?”

  She began to nod, concern pulling at the corners of her eyes. “He’ll be all the more bitter.”

  Carl swung away, throwing his hands up into the air. “I don’t want any part of this. Even being around the man makes me feel like I need to spit something dirty out of my mouth. But we’ve no choice now.” He sighed, very tired now. “If we’re not careful, Melissa, this could tear your family apart again. I mean, it could totally tear them apart all over again.”

  Chapter 20

  It was on the afternoon of April first, his sixth day out, that Nathan topped a bluff overlooking the frontier outpost of Prairie du Chien and Fort Crawford, which lay at the confluence of the Wisconsin and Mississippi Rivers. He reined in the horse, stopping for a moment to look at the scene before him. He had told himself he would stop at Prairie du Chien and pamper himself with the luxury of a bed, a bath, and a barber, and in that order. He was a sorry-looking sight. Three of the six days had seen heavy rains. He had slept in barns and sheds a couple of nights, under trees or out in the open for the rest. His face was covered with six days’ beard, which itched to the point of driving him mad. His horse was filthy and nearly spent. It was time for a rest, before he pressed on for the last leg of the trip.

  Suddenly, he stood in the stirrup, leaning forward. He rubbed his eyes, and peered more closely at the muddy brown river below him. He was absolutely thunderstruck. There in the river, tied up about a quarter of a mile downstream from the town, was a lumber raft. All through the winter, Nathan had listened to the experienced men talk about getting the lumber downriver. They bragged about the size of the rafts and about what life on them was like, but Nathan had put that down to the typical tendency of lumberjacks to boast and exaggerate. Now, as he stared in openmouthed amazement, he believed them. He had been prepared for something quite remarkable, but this?

  The raft—or rather, the three separate rafts, hooked together loosely, like the skeleton of some gigantic serpent—was easily three hundred feet long, and a hundred wide. Close to an acre in total area if it was a foot, he decided. He shook his head. His mind would not accept what his eyes were telling him. How did you take something like that down the Mississippi? How did you even steer such a monster?

  He sat there for almost a minute, trying to comprehend what it must have taken to put that thing together, but then the weariness caught up with him and he finally rode on. But as he started down the hill toward the town, he made a decision. As anxious as he was to reach his destination, he decided he wouldn’t leave first thing in the morning after all. This he had to see for himself.

  Nathan had to smile as he saw the man kneeling at the river’s edge scrubbing out a shirt in the muddy water. The Mississippi was running high with the first of the spring runoff, and the water was a thick chocolate brown. He wondered if the shirt had been white to begin with. It certainly wouldn’t be after the man was done. And evidently this was his only shirt, for his suspenders were down and he wore no other shirt over his long johns.

  At the sound of Nathan’s footsteps, he looked up. His hair was long but clean, his thick beard almost as red as his underwear. His eyes were surprisingly blue.

  “Mornin’,” Nathan called.

  The man nodded.

  “Could you tell me who’s in charge of the raft here?”

  The man sat back on his heels and started to wring out the shirt. “Why do you ask?” It wasn’t said with any rancor, but there was a touch of wariness in the eyes. Nathan detected a clear Irish brogue in the man’s voice.

  “I’m headed back up to a lumber camp on the Black River to help my brother bring a raft down.” He turned and surveyed the expanse of huge craft before him. “All winter long the men kept talking about how big one of these would be. I didn’t believe them.”

  “Which camp?” the man asked, noticeably more amiable at the suggestion that Nathan might be a fellow lumberman.

  “Joshua Steed’s the owner. Frenchie Dubuque’s the foreman.”

  “Ah,” he said, smiling now. “Frenchie and I cut Norwegian pine up farther north a few years back.” He shook out the shirt and then came over, sticking out his other hand. “Patrick McDonnell. I’m in charge here.”

  His grip was solid and powerful. Nathan would have hated to arm wrestle this man. “Nathan Steed. Would you mind if I looked around? This is fascinating.”

  “Come on,” was the quick reply, “I’ll show you.”

  As they moved to two boards that served as a gangplank, Nathan peered at the side of the raft. Some rafts were made of logs, but this was all sawn lumber, thick planks cut in a mill, just like what Joshua planned to do. He counted quickly. The raft was ten planks thick and the planks were two-by-twelves, so that made the deck of the raft about twenty inches above the waterline.

  Nathan pointed. “How many more planks are below the waterline?”

  McDonnell shrugged. “About that many more, I suppose. Frenchie will know this, but you’ve got to be careful you don’t make your platform too thick or your draft will be too deep.” He swore amiably. “And believe me, getting this little boat unstuck from a sandbar is no picnic.”

  “I can believe that,” Nathan said. “How in the world do you steer this thing?”

  “Come on, I’ll show you.” As they went aboard the raft, Nathan noted that two temporary shacks had been built on this section.

  Another man, cooking something over a small fire in a brazier near one of the shacks, watched them curiously but said nothing. The Irishman moved to the front center of the lead section. There a huge oarlock and a massive oar had been attached to the raft. The oar was tipped down so that the blade was up and out of the water, and Nathan could see the oar’s whole length. The blade itself was three to four feet long, and the handle another fifteen or sixteen, making the whole thing a good twenty feet long.

  McDonnell laid out his shirt on the deck to dry, then moved to the oar. “These oars are used for basic maneuvering in the current. In shallower water we also use long poles.” He turned and pointed. “There’s an oar at the front and rear of each section. One or two men are at each oar. You just work together.”

  Nathan whistled softly. “And it really works?”

  “Well, you gotta know what you’re doing. And you have to remember that you can’t turn this thing like a carriage.”

  “So you live right on the boat?” Nathan asked, turning to look at the two hastily constructed wooden shacks behind them.

  “Well, kind of. We sleep out on the deck unless the weather’s bad. Some always prefer to sleep on shore. The smaller shack is the cook shack. But the same thing holds true there too. If the weather’s good we cook on deck or on shore.”

  “You tie up every night, then?”

  “Oh, yes,” McDonnell said. “You’ll not be wanting to float this thing down the river when you can’t see what’s ahead of you.”

  “How big a crew does it take to run this?”

  “We’ve got four men for each platform section, plus a cook.”

  Nathan moved to where long lateral boards, spaced at about eight-foot intervals, tied the whole platform together. He dropped to one knee to examine the system more carefully. At three-foot intervals all along the lateral boards, holes had been drilled and long steel pins driven into them.

  He looked up at McDonnell, who had come to stand beside him. “The pins go all the way through?”

  “Have to, otherwise the bottom layers would shift on you. Ever seen a raft auger?”

  “No.”

  “It’s just a very long brace and bit.” He demonstrated with his hand. “The bit is about five feet long, and the brace is about here.” His hands were at chest height. They started turning, as though he were drilling a hole. “You just drill straight through the whole lot, then drive the pins all the way through.”

  Nathan straightened. It was incredible. There was no other word for it. Even now, standing right on top of it, he co
uld hardly believe what he was seeing. But what a savings of manpower. “Can you imagine trying to haul this much lumber six hundred miles by wagon?”

  McDonnell laughed shortly. “You can try that if you like. Me, I’ll stay with the river rafts.”

  By the time Will had been in bed for two hours he was into the deepest part of his sleep. The first three knocks on the door had no effect. Then, as the sound continued more loudly than before, it finally penetrated his consciousness. With a groan he finally opened his eyes. He threw the covers back and swung out of bed. Rubbing at his eyes, he stopped at the small table by the window and peered at his clock in the dim moonlight coming through the window. It was five minutes after eleven. He moaned. What idiot was out and about at this hour?

  When he opened the door and saw Nathan standing there in the darkness, he just stared dumbly at him.

  Nathan grinned. “Sorry, Will. Were you asleep?”

  “Nathan?”

  “Yes, Will. It’s your uncle. Remember me? I’m back.”

  “But I thought . . .”

  Nathan pushed his way inside, not waiting for an invitation, and set his bag down on the floor. “I know. You didn’t think I was coming, did you?”

  “No. Pa said he wrote you.”

  “He did. And I got it. I also got your letter. I decided it was best that I be here.”

  Will was awake now, though still a little dazed by the sight of his uncle standing there before him. Then he spontaneously reached out and hugged Nathan. “I’m glad.”

  “Me too. How are things?” Nathan asked quietly.

  Will shrugged, shutting the door now. “All right, I suppose. I tried to apologize once and he just brushed it off. Said it wasn’t that important, to just forget about it.”

  Nathan grunted. “Just like he has forgotten it, right?”

  “Yeah,” Will responded glumly. “We talk when we have to, but that’s about all. And even then it’s only about the business here.” He tried a smile. “But I’m still here. That’s something, isn’t it?”