“What about your property in Ramus?” Matthew asked.
“It’s up for sale. I have a man representing my interests there. So far I’ve been offered two hundred dollars.”
“Two hundred dollars?” Carl cried. “That’s an outrage. With your house and the school and the land you’ve got, it’s worth three or four thousand if it’s worth a dime.”
“I hardly think this is a seller’s market,” Solomon remarked dryly and with no touch of bitterness. “I’ll wait a while, but two hundred may be the best I can get.”
The reality of that sobered them all. “Well,” Nathan said after a moment, “I guess that settles it. Except for Joshua and Caroline, we all know what choice we’ve made. For those of us who have decided to go, I’d like to suggest we continue this meeting and start laying out a plan on how to prepare.” He looked to Carl and Melissa, then to Joshua and Caroline. “You are welcome to stay if you’d like, but if you’d rather not, we’ll understand.”
Carl rose immediately. “I think we’ll get back to the children.” He pulled Melissa up.
Joshua rose too, but Caroline didn’t stir. “Do you mind if I stay and listen, Joshua?”
He frowned momentarily, then shook his head. “Not if you want.”
“I do.”
To her surprise, he sat back down again.
As Carl and Melissa said their good-byes and started for the door, Melissa stopped and gave Nathan a quick hug. “Thank you,” she whispered into his ear. “Thank you for not making us feel like we are awful for not coming with you.”
He put his arms around her and held her. They stood that way for several moments, brother and sister, knowing all that had been decided tonight and what it would mean for them. “We will miss you, Melissa,” he whispered back. “We’ll miss you something terrible.”
She nodded, her eyes wet again, then quickly turned and followed Carl out the door.
Joshua was currying a team of sorrel Belgians that had come in the previous night on a run from Springfield. With the recent rains the roads were rutted and muddy, and the horses showed it. It had been too late to do anything more than unharness them and give them each a bucket of grain, so this morning Joshua had come to the stable to clean them up. When his stable boys showed up and found their boss already there doing their work, they were greatly chagrined and tried to take over, but he waved them off and sent them out to do other things.
He finished the first horse, gave her an affectionate slap on the rump, and led her back to her stall. As he brought the second one out and tied her to the post, the door to the stable opened and a figure stepped inside. Joshua turned, expecting more of his help, but was surprised to see it was Nathan.
“Good morning.”
“Mornin’.” Joshua was standing there, currycomb in hand, watching his brother approach.
Nathan smiled. “You can close your mouth now, Joshua. Is it so shocking that I would come out to see you?”
“It’s pretty early,” Joshua said, recovering a little. He moved around the horse and began working on her neck. The animal lowered its head a little, her skin rippling with pleasure under the firm hand of her owner.
Nathan walked over to the bench, found a brush, and moved to the opposite side of the horse. His arm moved back and forth in long, methodical strokes now too. They worked together like that in silence for almost five minutes, smoothing the hair, brushing out the caked mud, untangling clods of dirt and cockleburs from the tail and mane.
By the time they reached the withers, Joshua could look directly at Nathan over the mare’s back. “So are you going to tell me, or are you going to make me guess? You’ve obviously got something on your mind.”
Nathan shrugged. “I didn’t sleep much last night.”
There was a soft hoot. “Couldn’t happen to a more deserving man.”
“Joshua, I’m not the cause of the problem. All I’m trying to do is to get us to start talking about this decision, face it so we can do something about it.”
Joshua stopped the steady stroking and looked at his brother. “I know that, Nathan. I guess I don’t like being made to face it.” A quick shadow passed across his face. “It doesn’t help.”
There was a slow nod, then Nathan went back to brushing the horse.
“At least Carl and Melissa have committed themselves,” Joshua said after a few moments.
“Yeah. That kind of surprised me. The last I talked to Carl he was still agonizing over what they were going to do.”
“No, not over what they were going to do, only about how to break it to the family. You gave him that opportunity and he took it.”
“Mother will be heartbroken,” Nathan noted softly. “And Papa too. Melissa has always had a special way with him.”
“I know, and thank heavens. She’s the one who kept Pa and me from going at each other more than once in those long-ago years.”
“Yes.” Now Nathan lowered the brush and looked at Joshua steadily. “And what are you and Caroline going to do, Joshua? How are you going to resolve this?”
Joshua shook his head brusquely. This was the very thing that had gotten him out of bed long before dawn and brought him to the stables to give him a chance to think. “I don’t know, Nathan. I truly don’t know.”
Nathan said nothing, but continued to watch him. Now Joshua stopped as well and leaned against the horse, staring at Nathan. “You know,” he said pointedly, “I’ve made some pretty significant compromises lately.”
“Yes, you have.”
“I accepted Will’s decision to be baptized. I gave Caroline my blessing to join the Church. And Savannah, I gave her permission too.”
“I thought that was more of a surrender than a permission,” Nathan drawled laconically.
Joshua laughed in spite of himself. “I think you’re right.” Then the smile faded. “But Will and Alice too, Nathan. I did my best to convince Walter to give in and accept what is.”
“I know you did. Will told me. And Alice told Lydia what that means to her. What you mean to her.”
“She did?”
“Yes.”
Joshua stepped back, cleaning the hair from the currycomb’s teeth. “Anyway, back to my point. I’ve given in a lot for the family lately. Isn’t it about my turn to have something go my way?”
Nathan sighed. “Is that how it’s done?”
“Is that how what is done?”
“Making decisions in a marriage? You take turns?”
Joshua’s mouth hardened a little.
“I’m not trying to say you’re wrong, Joshua. I’m asking a fundamental question. When a man and a woman are poles apart on something this significant, how do they decide what to do? Is taking turns the way to do that?”
“It’s one way,” he said stubbornly.
“And if the situation were reversed,” Nathan went on in a quiet voice, “if it were Caroline who had made all of those compromises, and she said it was your turn to compromise now, would taking turns be an acceptable solution for you? Would you agree to go west because it was your turn to let her decide?”
Joshua went down on one knee and began to work on the mare’s legs. After a moment, Nathan did the same, looking at him under the horse. When Joshua looked up, he was frowning. “You know what, little brother? Sometimes you are a pain in the neck.”
Nathan chuckled. “You only say that when you know I’m right.”
“Well, I don’t like your point,” he grumbled. “And being right only makes it worse.”
Now Nathan was very quiet. “Caroline has made some compromises too, Joshua. She went your way once.”
Joshua’s head jerked up. His eyes were filled with instant pain. It was almost as if he were staring right through Nathan.
Glad now that he hadn’t added what he had been tempted to say—that Caroline had gone to Warsaw at Joshua’s insistence, and that it had cost Olivia her life—Nathan waited, watching his brother’s face. It was over a year now, but it was clear that the ache had not eased
much.
“Look, Joshua,” Nathan went on in a low voice, “I didn’t come to try and tell you what to do. I know how difficult this is for you and Caroline, and I thought you might want to talk about it.”
There was a brief nod; then Joshua stood and walked around the horse, seeing how she looked. Satisfied, he took the halter rope and led her back to the stall. “Want to get some oats?” he finally asked.
Nathan went to the barrel, retrieved a bucket of oats, and spread the oats evenly down the feeding trough. As the horses began to snuffle them up, Nathan returned the bucket. Then they both moved to a bench and sat back against it.
“So what do we do, Nathan?” Joshua asked. “I don’t see any compromise on this one.”
“Not an obvious one,” Nathan agreed.
“It’s not just that I’m against the Church, Nathan. It means moving my family out into the wilderness. It means a thousand miles across who knows what kind of country. There’ll be Indians, wild animals, dysentery, cholera. I’ve got a baby who’s not even two yet.” He stopped, realizing that Nathan had a child just one year older, and that Lydia was with child again. If there were reasons for being concerned, Nathan’s were equal to if not greater than his.
“I don’t think that’s the real reason you don’t want to go.”
There was a quick flash of irritation. “You think taking care of my family isn’t a good reason?”
“Of course it is.” He decided to let it go at that. “There is another possible solution,” he said, not turning.
“What?” Then Joshua snorted. “Join the Church? No thank you.”
“I’m not talking about joining the Church.”
“Then what?”
“Accepting what you know to be true.”
“And what’s that?” Joshua snapped at him.
“You know that there’s something to this work that you can’t explain. You know there is a power here that you don’t want to think about.”
“Do I?” Joshua shot up. “Sorry, Nathan. I know you’re all filled with testimony and conviction, but leave me out of it.”
“You should never have lived,” Nathan said quietly.
That rocked him back a little. “What?”
“When they brought you to our house that night in Far West, with a hole in your back, and a bigger hole in your stomach where the ball came out, you were so close to death, we didn’t think you’d make it through the night.”
Joshua was watching him closely, still breathing hard from his anger, but silenced for the moment.
“And to put you on a travois and drag you over rough terrain for twenty-five miles. It was insane. You should have been dead before we got you out of the house.”
“But you blessed me with the priesthood.” It was meant to be a sneer, but it came out with a touch of wonder in it as well.
“Yes, we did.” He waited for a moment. “And you lived.”
“I’m strong. I was younger then.”
“Of course,” Nathan agreed amiably. “And it wasn’t a year later that you sat in Pa’s house and watched Joseph Smith command our father in the name of Christ to get off his deathbed and be well. You saw it, Joshua! And just hours before, you were saying your last good-byes to him. Was there any question in your mind that Pa was dying? Any question at all?”
Joshua didn’t answer. He stared at Nathan with great, haunted eyes.
“I didn’t think so. And yet with one single command from Joseph, he rose and went with you across the river. Then Joseph went to our house and blessed our Elizabeth Mary. She was dying too. You know that. I know that. And yet she was immediately healed.”
Nathan’s voice was barely above a whisper now. “You went across the river with Joseph that day,” he pressed on with relentless softness. “You were there in that room with Elijah Fordham. You saw him raised from his bed, Joshua. You yourself said you thought he was dead. And yet now he lives because Joseph Smith commanded him to. How do you explain that, Joshua? Tell me. I want to know. How do you explain what you have witnessed with your own eyes?”
There was a long silence, then a slow shake of his head. “I don’t know how to explain it.” Then once again he started to fight back. “But if it is God’s hand in all of this, like you say, then why did Joseph and Hyrum have to die? Why didn’t God protect them?”
“Because God has his own purposes. Joseph said over and over in those last months that his work was through. You heard him. Even the Savior himself had to die when his work was finished.”
Joshua shook his head, half-angry, half-bewildered.
“What did you see that day in the meeting when Brigham was speaking to us?” Nathan suddenly asked.
Joshua jumped as though he had been stung by the flick of a buggy whip. “What meeting?” he temporized.
Nathan gave him a look of patient weariness.
“I didn’t see anything.”
“All right. You didn’t see anything. So what happened? Something happened to you. I was watching, Joshua. Caroline was watching. What was it?”
Joshua’s head dropped. “I . . . I thought I heard Joseph’s voice.”
“You thought?” Nathan bore in.
“It may have been a trick of the mind,” he began.
“And Caroline? Was she tricked too? And Lydia? Or maybe they’re all lying to you. What about Christopher, Joshua? He was five years old, and yet he suddenly saw Joseph Smith talking to the crowd instead of Brigham Young. Was he trying to trick you too? Did Derek and Rebecca put him up to that so he could deceive you?”
“Now you’re being ridiculous.”
“Am I? Hundreds of people experienced what you experienced that day, Joshua. They either saw or heard something miraculous. These are good people. Decent people. What was it? Some form of mass hysteria? Some gigantic hoax that Brigham foisted on the people?”
“What did you see that day? What did Pa see?”
Nathan shook his head slowly. “It’s not like you to dodge the truth, Joshua.”
“I’m not dodging anything. I want to know what happened to you that day.”
“Nothing.”
“So how do you explain that?”
Nathan just looked at him and shook his head again. “It won’t work, Joshua.”
“What?”
“Dodging the issue by trying to focus on me. What does it matter what happened or didn’t happen to me? How do you explain what happened to you?”
“I don’t have to explain it,” came the reply. He was suddenly angry again.
“No, you don’t want to explain it,” Nathan shot right back. His voice rose to meet the intensity of Joshua’s, but there was no anger, no loss of temper. He had thought about this a great deal all through the night and had determined that he was not going to let his brother simply sidestep the issue because it made him uncomfortable. “And do you know why you don’t want to?”
Joshua was suddenly tired of it all. He shook his head wearily. “No, little brother. Why don’t you just tell me?”
Nathan dropped his hands to his side. “I don’t need to.” He turned and started toward the door of the stable. He stopped as he reached it, and turned back. “I think this is the first time in my life I have ever seen Joshua Steed refuse to deal with reality, no matter how unpleasant it may be to him.”
“This is not my reality!” Joshua shouted hoarsely. “It’s yours. All this talk of God and miracles. It’s your explanation, not mine.”
“All right. I’m not asking you to accept my explanation—God, faith, prayer, priesthood. Give me yours, Joshua. But give me something. Don’t just stand there and refuse to answer because you know you will be convicted by your own words.”
“I don’t have to account to you.”
“No, you don’t,” Nathan agreed. “But you’re fast approaching the day when you have to make a choice, Joshua. Then there will be an accounting of some kind, whether you like it or not.”
“Then it’s my problem, isn’t it?”
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Nathan’s head came up, his face lined with weariness and surrender. “For some time, Joshua, the Lord has been trying to tell you something. Just how many tellings is it going to take?”
“It’s my problem,” Joshua said again stubbornly.
“Oh, how much simpler it would be if that were really true.”
Caroline was in the backyard, hanging out the wash she and Savannah had finished earlier that morning. She looked up in surprise as Nathan walked around the house and raised one hand in greeting. “Good morning.”
“Hello, Nathan.” She gave him a strange look. “Business at the store that bad?”
He laughed. “I am very fortunate in that I have not only a wife but two children who actually like running a store.” Then he sobered. “To be honest, I spent the last hour down at the stable currying horses.”
“Our stable?”
“Yes.” He motioned toward the porch and the two chairs sitting there. It was a cool morning, but the sun was bright and shining directly onto the porch. “Have you got a minute?”
“Of course.” She pinned Savannah’s petticoat to the line, wiped her hands on her apron, then followed him to the back porch. Before sitting down, she turned her chair so she could face him more squarely. “Did it do any good?” she asked, once they were settled.
His eyes widened momentarily that she should have guessed; then he pulled a face. “Well, it got him mad at me again. But that’s no surprise.”
“He knows you’re just trying to keep the family together, Nathan.”
“No, it’s more than that. He knows I’m trying to get him to face things he doesn’t want to face.”
She said nothing, just leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes, feeling the sun on her face and liking it. He watched her absently, running through his conversation with Joshua again in his head. He had been quite discouraged walking back from the freight yards. Then, as he rounded Parley Street, it had come to him. It came with such swiftness and such clarity, that he had been quite excited with the idea. Now he was not nearly as certain about the wisdom of it.
She opened her eyes. “What are we going to do, Nathan?” she asked in a small, forlorn voice.
“I have no right to counsel you, Caroline.”
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