Something in his voice made her sit up. “But . . . ?”
“I have a recommendation.”
“I’m listening.”
“I had a thought as I was walking back. I’m not saying you ought to do it, I’m just saying I’d like you to think about it.”
She smoothed the apron in her lap, considering what that really meant. “All right.”
“Let me ask you three questions,” he started.
“Go ahead.”
“First question. Do you believe Joshua loves you?”
“Of course.”
“Really loves you?”
She hesitated this time, but only to give his question honest consideration. Her answer was still the same. “Without doubt.”
“Good. Second question. Do you think that at heart he wants what is best for you and the children?”
That took her longer, but after a moment, she nodded again. “Definitely for the children.”
“But not for you?”
“Well, he wants what he thinks is best for me. But he doesn’t understand how important the Church is to me.”
He started to raise a third finger, but she cut him off. “No, that’s not fair. Joshua does understand in one way, it’s just that . . . well, I don’t know. The Church doesn’t mean anything to Joshua, so he can’t really understand what I’m feeling inside. Does that make sense to you?”
“Yes, it does. Okay, third question. If you don’t go west with us, do you think you would put the salvation of yourself and your children in jeopardy?”
That took her aback and she looked puzzled. “In jeopardy?”
“Yes. Do you think you would lose your standing with God if you don’t go?”
Her brows puckered as she thought about that. “Well, I truly believe that it is God’s will that we go west. By we, I mean as a church. But no, I suppose that if we don’t go—especially if the reason was to keep our family together—that would not displease God.”
He took a deep breath. “So trust Joshua, Caroline.”
Her eyes lifted and widened. “What?”
“Trust him!”
“You mean let him make the decision?” she scoffed. “We’ll go to St. Louis.”
“I’m not sure you will.”
“So the man gets to make the decision,” she said, a trace of bitterness hardening her voice. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“Do you think that’s what I believe?” he answered softly.
After a moment she shook her head. “No, I’ve watched how you and Lydia work. It’s wonderful, Nathan.”
He stood up and began to pace back and forth as he spoke. “Right now, Joshua is so determined to talk you out of going west that he’s not really thinking about what is the right thing to do. If you believe that he loves you and that he wants what is best for you and the children, then trust him. Tell him you really believe that he will make the right choice for your family.”
She started to speak, but he held up one hand quickly. “However, you can only say that if you really do believe it.”
She formed a steeple with her fingers, watching them closely as she made sure each finger lined up precisely with the other. “And you think this may be the solution?” she finally asked dubiously.
He threw up his hands. “I don’t know,” he cried. “I think so. You know Joshua better than I do. You know how stubborn he can be. He digs in to make his point, sometimes even after he’s forgotten what the point is.”
She laughed. “I think you know him pretty well.”
“That’s why he and Pa used to have such frightful battles. Half the time they couldn’t remember what the battle was all about. When you get like that, the battle becomes the thing that drives you. All I am saying is, don’t give him battle and see what happens.”
She blew out her breath in a low whistle. “You’re not asking much, are you?”
He sat down again, leaning forward earnestly. “And what frightens me is that I have no right to say it, Caroline. It’s easy for me to hand out advice. I don’t have to live with the consequences.”
For a long time she was silent, her eyes half-closed as she watched him. Finally, she straightened, and then she too leaned forward so she was looking directly at him. “Can I ask you a question, Nathan?”
“Of course.”
“The family has been fasting every week now in order to get an answer to this whole problem.”
“Yes.”
“Do you think this”—she threw out one hand—“this thought of yours is the result of that?”
That caught him completely off guard. He rocked back in his chair a little. “I . . . I hadn’t thought about it in that way.”
“You said the thought came to you while you were coming back from the freight yards.”
“Yes.”
“Suddenly? Out of nowhere?”
“Well, yes. Kind of.” But then he shook his head immediately, seeing where this was leading. “No, Caroline. I can’t say it was from the Lord. You should only do this if you feel good about it.”
“Can you say it wasn’t from the Lord?”
He thought about that. “No, but—”
“If it’s from the Lord, I should be able to have him confirm it to me too, shouldn’t I?”
There was instant relief on his face. “Yes, of course.”
“Then I will think about it, Nathan.” Her face softened. “Thank you. This really isn’t your burden.”
“That’s what Joshua tried to say too,” he answered quietly.
She nodded, then reached out and touched his hand briefly. “Well, thank you.”
He stood again and stepped off the porch. He gave her a jaunty grin. “Well, the store awaits.”
She laughed. “When you get to wherever it is the Church is going, are you going to be a storekeeper again?”
The grin slowly faded. “I don’t know. Hadn’t thought about it.”
She smiled warmly at him. “You don’t have to be, Nathan. You can be whatever you want to be.”
“Joshua?”
He looked up from the newspaper.
“Do you think it is your right as the man to make this decision for us?”
The paper lowered slowly. “By this decision, I assume you mean—”
She waved her hand at him impatiently. “Of course.”
He looked suspicious now as he turned the question over in his mind, wondering what had brought this out of the blue, looking for any hidden traps. “Well,” he began cautiously, “I think I have a responsibility as the head of the house to watch over the family, but not without consulting you.”
She could see the relief in his eyes as he realized that was a good answer. “And if we cannot agree?” she asked.
“Then we talk until we do.”
“And you won’t just declare it to be so, whatever it is you think we ought to do?”
“If I was willing to do that, we could have solved this problem some time ago,” he quipped.
She looked a little surprised. “Yes, I suppose that’s true.” She stood abruptly and walked over to him. To his surprise, she leaned down and kissed him. “I appreciate the fact that you haven’t done that.”
He laid the paper down in his lap, clearly perplexed. “What is this about, Caroline?”
“Oh,” she said airily, “I was just thinking about it today.” Then she grew more serious. “If I thought you were going to make me do what you want without really considering what I want, I would fight you every step of the way, Joshua. But I know you are not that way.”
His bewilderment was only deepening. “So?”
“So I want you to know that I trust you. I’m going to stop talking about what I feel is best. You already know that. I am going to trust you to decide.”
Now his brows narrowed suspiciously. “Is this a trick?”
She laughed, then reached down and took the paper, tossing it aside. She sat down in his lap, pulling his arms around her neck. “Yes. It’s a
trick to get you to hold me.”
“That I can do,” he said, enfolding her now in his arms.
She laid her head against his shoulder.
“You really mean it?” he said after a moment. “About trusting me?”
“I do.” She kissed him softly. “I really do, Joshua. I know you want what is best for all of us.”
“Yes,” he said slowly. “I do.” He drew back a little, staring at her in wonder. “What brought all this on?”
She shrugged that off. “I’ve been thinking about it all day.” She kissed him again, and now he kissed her back, pulling her fully into his embrace. Suddenly a noise from the hallway jerked them apart. They looked up to see Savannah, Charles, and little Livvy standing there in the lamplight, staring at them with wide eyes.
Caroline blushed furiously and started to get up, but Joshua, laughing, held her down. “Hello, children,” he said. “Can we help you?”
“Will you read us a story, Daddy?” Charles, now almost six, asked tentatively.
But Savannah shook her head. Her eyes were wise and motherly. “No, Charles. Mama and Daddy are loving each other. I’d better read the story tonight.”
Chapter 22
Young Joshua Steed lifted the spyglass that he had borrowed from his Uncle Solomon Garrett and focused it on the steamboat that had rounded the bend about a mile downriver. He did so lazily and without hope. This was his fourth day here, sitting on a point of land that jutted out into the river about five miles south of Nauvoo. He would ride out in the morning, sit there through the long day, then ride home again at dark. It was easy duty and it beat the frantic pace of preparation going on back at home, but Joshua, who had turned fourteen in May, did not like enforced inactivity. He much preferred having something to do, even if it was hot and sweaty and dusty work. But his father had been adamant. He didn’t trust any of the other male cousins, all of whom were younger than Joshua, and none of the adults could be spared.
It was the twentieth of October. The letter from his grandparents, which had arrived five days before, said they thought the time of their arrival would be somewhere between the eighteenth and the twenty-first. But the family was taking no chances and started the vigil on the seventeenth. They would keep him coming until the twenty-fourth, a thought which filled him with dread.
He found the boat in the spyglass, adjusted the focus slightly, then leaned forward, elbows on his knees. Though nearly as tall as Nathan now, he was still long and lanky and not filled out like his father, so he had to wiggle his legs a little to find a comfortable position. It was still much too far away to see the nameplate, but he could tell it was a single rear-paddle steamer. It was spurting out great streams of black smoke from twin smokestacks on each side of the boat. That meant twin boilers and explained why it was making such good time against the current.
He lowered the spyglass and sat back against the trunk of the tree that provided him a backrest. At first he had started counting the boats that passed upriver to help pass the time. That was too infrequent to be interesting, so he added those going downriver as well, keeping the ratio between the two in his head. Two up, three down. Six up, nine down. But by yesterday afternoon he had tired of that and lost count. This one would be the tenth or eleventh boat going upriver. Almost twice that many were going downriver, an indicator of how late the river season was growing.
He waited five more minutes. Now the swish-swish of the great paddles was filling the air, and the boat was just two to three hundred yards downriver from him. He straightened and lifted the spyglass again. It took him a minute to find the nameplate—the boat was painted a bright red and white, with black smokestacks and blue paddle wheels. But then he had it, just back of the prow.
He stiffened, jerking forward. He pulled away from the spyglass, blinked his eyes to clear them, then brought them up again. There was no mistaking it. In large black letters against the white background it was plain to read. Pittsburgh Palace.
Joshua leaped to his feet, stuffing the spyglass back into its case, and sprinted for his horse. In a moment he was back out on the road to Nauvoo, leaning forward in the saddle, urging the horse into a hard lope.
As the Pittsburgh Palace nosed gently up against the dock on South Main Street, Mary Ann scanned the crowd anxiously, looking for a familiar face. It was not a large crowd—maybe two dozen at most—and the task was not a hard one. Her face fell and she came back down off her tiptoes shaking her head.
“They probably didn’t get our letter,” Benjamin said, strangely feeling almost as sharply disappointed as Mary Ann.
“I was afraid they wouldn’t.” She reached down and picked up her valise as the crew jumped onto the dock and secured the boat to thick wooden pillars. In a moment, they heard the creak of the gangplank being lowered and joined the few passengers who moved toward it.
As they stepped off the dock and started up Main Street, Benjamin looked to their left at the house there. It was a two-story wooden home, originally made of logs but with some frame additions on the back and side. It was the Homestead, the original home of Joseph and Emma Smith in Nauvoo. “I wonder how Emma’s doing,” he said.
Mary Ann just shook her head. “From what the children have said, I—” She stopped. Directly across the street to the east was the Nauvoo House, Joseph Smith’s planned hotel for the incoming riverboat traffic. It was still under construction and there were two workers on the upper story. But what had stopped her was the man who had stepped out from behind the rear wall. It was Joshua.
“Hello, Mother.”
With a little gasp, she dropped the valise and ran into his arms, throwing herself the last few feet and almost knocking him over. “Joshua! Joshua!”
He picked her up as easily as if she were a child and swung her around and around. Finally he set her down and kissed her soundly on the cheek. “Welcome home, Mother!”
By then Benjamin had come over to join them. Mary Ann stepped back and father and son moved into each other’s embrace, hugging each other tightly and pounding each other on the back. “Hello, Pa.”
“Joshua, it is so good to see you.”
“It is so good to have you back.”
Mary Ann looked around. “Where are Caroline and the children? And the rest of the family?”
“Well, that’s a long story. Come on,” he said, taking her valise with one hand and her elbow with the other. “Let me go over here and get my things, and then I’ll explain.”
They moved across the street to the Nauvoo House, and he stepped around the corner of the building whence he had appeared. He motioned for them to follow. “Come here. I want to show you something.”
As they came around the corner, both stopped dead. The east wall of the Nauvoo House was a long one and made of brick. There, lined up in a perfectly ordered row—not by age but by size—were Mary Ann’s twenty-five living grandchildren. Will was the tallest at the far end. And then, like steps coming down from the attic, they went one by one down to Carl and Melissa’s little one-year-old Mary Melissa, who was the shortest. The only exception were the three babies who had been born earlier in the spring—babies which their grandparents had never seen—who were held by older brothers and sisters. Each grandchild was dressed in his or her Sunday best. All were grinning as if they were going to split their faces wide open if they held the smiles for one more second.
“Oh, my!” Mary Ann exclaimed, her hands coming up to her mouth.
“Surprise!” Joshua said softly. And with that, from around the far end of the big house, the adults stepped out now too, smiling just as broadly and happily as their children.
Mary Ann just stood there, rooted to the spot, tears instantly springing to her eyes and spilling over. She had borne ten children. Her oldest, a girl, had died a few hours after birth. Three, including twin girls, had been silent children, never drawing a breath. A boy born between the stillbirths had died at age four. But the rest of her five children had grown to adulthood and now were marrie
d and had families of their own. And every one of them was here now to greet her and Benjamin. Along the way they had picked up four foster children—Derek and Peter Ingalls and Kathryn and Jennifer Jo McIntire. Now here they all were—sons, daughters, sons-in-law, daughters-in-law, and enough grandchildren to fill a wall.
With a cry of inexpressible joy, she dropped to her knees, unmindful of the wet earth, and held out her arms. “Well,” she said hoarsely, “don’t just stand there. Grandpa and I haven’t had a really good hug in over a year.”
The younger children let out a shriek, and in seconds Benjamin and Mary Ann were swarmed under as their family came to welcome them home.
As Alice and Will walked slowly southward along Granger Street, a tiny breeze sprung up, blowing off the river. Alice gave a little shiver and pulled her coat more tightly around her. It was barely four in the afternoon and the sun still had two hours before it would set, but the wind was blowing out of the west and had a distinct coolness to it. It held the promise of frost by morning. It was the twentieth day of October, and the last signs of autumn were everywhere evident. Off to their right, a field was covered with orange polka dots, the last of the pumpkins waiting to be harvested. Just behind the rail fence on the other side of the road, dry brown cornstalks, some of the few that had survived the great hailstorm of early September, rattled softly in the breeze.
“And you have no idea what this is about?” Alice asked with some nervousness, even though she had previously asked the same question of Will three times.
“None.”
“Are you sure the messenger asked me to come too?”
He reached inside his jacket and retrieved a folded paper. He opened it to show Savannah’s neatly lettered hand. “‘President Brigham Young wants Will and Alice to come to his home this afternoon at four o’clock. It will take only about half an hour.’”
She sighed. He had only read that to her half a dozen times. “Oh, Will, you must think me an absolute ninny, but I just can’t figure what President Young wants with both of us.”
“Maybe he’s heard about your decision to be baptized and wants to counsel you on the matter.”
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