Pillar of Light

by Gerald N. Lund

Nathan laughed softly. “We’ve already had our miracle for today. Let’s not get greedy here.”

  Derek and Nathan were in the parlor of Joshua’s home, bedrolls laid out on the rug. Nathan lay on his back, hands under his head, staring in the darkness at the unseen ceiling. The house was quiet now, though an hour before it had been filled with noise. Carl and Melissa and their five children came over. It had been a happy reunion in some ways, a sad one in another. Melissa was close to tears for most of the evening. Now she would be the only one left behind. And yet both she and Carl were adamant. They were not leaving. Joshua’s talk of the Missourian and the danger that hung over Nauvoo was brushed aside.

  After supper, the two families separated into informal groups. The children went upstairs to help Savannah and Charles and Livvy decide what they would and would not take. There was no mistaking the envy in Melissa’s children as those choices were made. Caroline took Melissa aside and told her that she and Joshua and Nathan had made a decision. They would deed the store to Melissa and Carl. She overrode Melissa’s protests. In a dying city, a general store was not a sure source of income. The men went into the parlor and talked quietly of what had to be done to get Joshua’s family ready. Carl offered them his wagon and team—his last one—but they were unanimous in refusing that. Carl had already seriously cut his capability to haul bricks, and if he did more he wouldn’t be able to care for his family. That was assuming that there would be any new construction to keep a brickyard going.

  Now, lying there in the dark, Nathan sighed, thinking yet again of Brigham’s words and challenge.

  “We’ll just have to make do until we get across Iowa,” Derek said beside him. “Maybe once we reach the Missouri River we can find someone and get what we need.”

  Turning in surprise—Nathan had assumed Derek was asleep—he came up on one elbow. “You’re worrying about it too?” he asked.

  “Yeah. But I figure even if worse comes to worst, we’ve got a wagon, we’ve got the two mules and my horses. We can get Joshua and his family back to our camp, at least. Then we’ll just make do. If we have to let those mules and horses pull us all the way to the Rocky Mountains, we’ll make do.”

  “Yes,” Nathan said. He lay back down, smiling in the darkness. “You’re right. What matters is that Caroline and the children are coming with us.”

  “Yes. Can you believe that? I thought we’d have a real battle on our hands with Joshua.”

  “Seems like there’s a lesson in that somewhere,” Nathan mused.

  “Like what?”

  “Like maybe the Lord does know what he’s doing in all this.”

  Joshua and Caroline were in the kitchen, separating out the dishes into two stacks—a small one of essentials that would go in the wagon, a much larger one to be given to Carl and Melissa. They would have the option of either keeping them for themselves or trying to sell them at the store. The sorting process was nearly done, and they would next move into the parlor to go through the twin china hutches that were there. Joshua could only guess what this was costing his wife emotionally. In those hutches was the set of porcelain dishes that Will had bought for her in China. There was an expensive set of sterling silver that Joshua had given her as a wedding gift. Three shelves were filled with treasured memorabilia she had collected over the years. And most of it would stay. Perhaps they would take a few of the items, such as the silver—not for sentimental value but as possible items for trade on the trail—but most would stay.

  In the light of day and with the sheer foolishness of this undertaking hitting him, Joshua was having second thoughts. It was challenge enough to sort through the accumulation of the years and glean out only enough to go into a single wagon, but that was only half the problem. It was two in the afternoon. Still no sign of Derek and Nathan. Which meant that they were having no success finding a wagon and trading for oxen.

  He shook his head. They didn’t even have a tent of their own. That meant sleeping out in the open, cramming into the wagons and sleeping on top of the bags and boxes, or sharing one of the tents with family members—an unpleasant prospect for them as well as for Joshua. He glanced at Caroline. If he weren’t absolutely sure of what her answer would be, he might have said something to her even now, asked her to reconsider maybe.

  And then he had to admit that Caroline wasn’t the only thing holding him back from changing his mind. The feelings he had experienced as they drove slowly through the streets of Nauvoo just after dark the previous evening had been very powerful. He was filled with a sense of deep foreboding. It wasn’t so much what he saw. There were the boarded-up houses and the deserted businesses, the empty corrals and abandoned barns, but there was still plenty of life in Nauvoo. Carl said that with the people from the outlying settlements coming in for safety, there was still somewhere between ten and twelve thousand Saints in town preparing to move out and follow the path Brigham had set. And yet . . . He had tried to convey what he had felt to Carl. Nauvoo was dying. Carl found the phrase irritating and vehemently disagreed. Joshua let it drop, but his feelings hadn’t changed. He didn’t want to leave Caroline and his children here alone. He had done that once and it had cost him the life of his daughter.

  Just then, somewhere in the house, a piano started to play softly. Someone was playing their scales. Joshua looked toward the door, then back at Caroline.

  She smiled sadly. “It’s Savannah. She knows this will be her last day to play for a very long time.”

  “Yes, it will.” Even if they had three or four wagons, taking a piano along would not be likely. He thought of the bogs, the broken axles, the teams flecked with mud and sweat as they tried to pull even the lighter wagons through. “A piano is not high on our list of necessities,” he noted dryly.

  “I know, and she knows it too. But she’s always said she would give up the piano if we could go west.”

  “I know. She told me that too. Too bad the city is emptying out. In a good market, that piano alone would fetch enough to buy a dozen yoke of oxen.”

  “Carl will keep trying to find a buyer for it,” Caroline suggested quickly, sensing his discouragement. “And if he doesn’t, maybe in a few years, when we’re settled wherever we’re going to be, we can come back and get it.”

  “Yeah,” he grunted, knowing how unlikely that was. The sound of the scales being played continued for another minute. On impulse, he stood up and walked quietly down the hall to the door of the parlor. It was ajar and he pushed it open slightly. Savannah was at the piano, her back to him. Her fingers moved up and down the keyboard, tinkling the keys at random. He thought he could sense what she was thinking, this determined young girl of his. Her loss of the instrument saddened him greatly, and suddenly he realized that she would celebrate her ninth birthday in about two weeks now. There wouldn’t be much of a party, not out on the trail. But as quickly as the thought had come, he knew what her answer would be if he said something to her. “But Papa, going west is all I want for my birthday.”

  Her hands stopped moving and silence fell over the room. She was looking at the keys now, her red hair falling softly around her face as her head was down. Then she straightened and began to play. This time it was neither scales nor random plunking. Joshua stiffened. It took him only an instant to recognize what it was she was playing. It was as if someone had slapped him.

  This piano, a Knabe he had brought in from the East at considerable expense, had been a posthumous birthday gift for Olivia. Back in Georgia, before Joshua had ever come to Savannah to buy cotton, Caroline had owned a piano—actually a pianoforte—and played it well. She had started Olivia on piano lessons at the age of six and was pleased to learn that her daughter had a natural affinity for the instrument. Joshua had bought a piano for them both when they moved to Independence. That had been destroyed when Joshua’s enemies set fire to their house. Once they were settled in Nauvoo, he had purchased another one. Through it all, Olivia’s abilities grew and her talent increased. She proved to be not only an a
ccomplished pianist but a gifted musician as well. She loved to compose little songs or snatches of melody and play them over and over. When Joshua had read about a new piano manufacturer in the East whose pianos were quickly gaining an excellent reputation, Joshua had decided he would get one for Olivia. Then she had been killed.

  One of Olivia’s songs had been written during those agonizing weeks when Joshua was certain that Joseph Smith was trying to convince Olivia to be one of his plural wives. Even now the memories seared him. He and Olivia had fought bitterly over it. She had been shattered by his refusal to believe her denials. And so, in those terrible few days, she had written a song. The music was hauntingly beautiful; it was simple and yet filled with all the pain, all the sorrow, all the pathos of a young woman whose heart was broken. She had played it over and over, and Caroline had come to call it simply “Olivia’s song.” After Olivia’s death Joshua spoke one day of his previous plans to buy the Knabe. At Caroline’s suggestion he had gone ahead, presenting it to Savannah and the other children on what would have been Olivia’s seventeenth birthday. He had not regretted that decision, but the piano would ever serve as a painful memorial to Joshua’s stupidity.

  But now what had jerked him up and twisted him with pain was that Savannah was playing Olivia’s song. And she was playing it with all the feeling that her sister had once put into it.

  There was a soft sound behind him and he turned to see Caroline coming down the hall to join him. She stopped at the sight of his face. “Joshua! What’s wrong?” She spoke in a soft whisper, not wanting to interrupt Savannah’s playing.

  It was as if he hadn’t heard her. He turned back, his eyes, large and dark and burning, fixed on the girl at the piano. It was Savannah he saw, but it was Olivia that he remembered.

  And then Caroline understood. “It’s Olivia’s song,” she murmured.

  He turned to her slowly. “How does she know it?”

  “Savannah has a wonderful ear for music, Joshua. She’s playing it from memory.”

  The song stopped. They both peered through the crack of the door. Savannah sat pensively for a moment, then started again. Once more the haunting music filled the room, this time joined by Savannah’s singing along with it, not with words but letting her voice follow the melody line. He reached out and shut the door quietly, then backed away a few steps. “I don’t know if I can stand hearing it again, Caroline.” His voice was low and strained, and she was amazed at the depth of his emotions.

  “I know,” she answered, her own voice soft. “The first time Savannah played it, I just wept. And yet . . .” She slid across the floor closer to him. “And yet, it’s like having Olivia back again, in a way.”

  “But she’s not back,” he said. It came out more sharply than he had intended.

  “No, Joshua, she’s not.”

  They listened quietly, touching hands lightly but not speaking. “She is never going to be as technically accomplished as Olivia was,” Caroline finally said. “But she has her sister’s feel for the music. Can you hear that?”

  “It’s beautiful. It’s—” He looked away. “It’s Olivia. That’s what hit me so hard. It is just Olivia all over again.”

  “I know.”

  For almost a full minute he stared down the hallway as the music softly filled the house. “Caroline?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m not going to give the piano to Carl. I’m going to ask him to keep it for us, but once we get settled, I’ll come back for it. For Olivia. And for Savannah.”

  Tears welled up. “I would like that, Joshua.”

  Then, in one moment, his face twisted and was filled with the most tortured anguish Caroline had ever seen. “If there was any way—any way!—to relive that time, I . . .” His head dropped and he closed his eyes. “I would give my own life to have her back.”

  They left Nauvoo late that same afternoon. It was Friday, March sixth. By then, Nathan and Derek had returned from scouring the city for oxen and another wagon. There had been a brief but joyous reunion when the two had happened to see Joseph Young up near the temple. Joseph was Brigham’s brother and the senior president of the Seventy. Brigham had left him in charge here in Nauvoo to oversee the exodus. Joseph told Nathan and Derek that the instructions from Brother Brigham were to wait until the temple was finished and dedicated—which would take place, it was hoped, by the end of April—and then to lead a second group west to join up with the Camp of Israel. This would be a much larger group, judging by the activity going on in Nauvoo. So while there were hundreds of wagons and teams to be found, no one was looking to sell them or trade oxen for mules and horses. By two o’clock they decided their chances for success were going to be better out among the scattered settlements of Iowa. They returned home, loaded the few belongings Joshua and Caroline had selected onto the wagon, had another tearful farewell with Carl and Melissa and their children, and headed down to the ferry.

  That night they camped on the west bank of the Mississippi, at the base of the bluffs. After supper they all trekked up to pay one final visit to the grave site of Benjamin Steed. By unspoken consent, they left Joshua and Savannah there alone for a time so Savannah could say a private good-bye to the man who had saved her life.

  Next morning they were on the road west by the time there was sufficient light to see. Over the past two days the weather had stayed mild and pleasant, with very little rain, and the roads had dried considerably. Those roads were still violently rutted and pitted and provided a bruising ride for anyone in the wagon, but with a team of mules and a team of horses pulling the lightly loaded wagon, they made good time. They passed Sugar Creek Camp before noon. Where once there had been several hundred wagons and two or three thousand people, now there was nothing but a few stragglers amid the blackened splotches of dead campfires, churned up soil, and bits and pieces of soggy debris stuck beneath bushes or trampled into the mud.

  By late afternoon they reached the Des Moines River and passed the site where they had camped the second night and danced to the music of William Pitt’s band. It was a good place to camp, but they pushed on another few miles before stopping for the night.

  By midday on Sunday their pace was starting to tell on the teams, but they pressed on anyway. They had broken the axle on Tuesday and started back on Wednesday. Brigham Young had planned to stay encamped that Wednesday and move out on Thursday, which meant that he was now four days ahead of where they had left the family. Three, Nathan corrected himself. He assumed that Brigham would use today, the Sabbath, as a rest day. There had been no question in his mind about whether their own group should do that. The situation was too urgent. They had to get the family on the road again and catch up to the main camp. Now the clear skies were gone. A high overcast could be the first sign of coming rain.

  It was shortly after three that afternoon when they crested a low rise and saw the white blotches of two wagons in the distance. Nathan, on the saddle horse, went up high in the stirrups, shading his eyes against the lowering sun. Joshua, who was driving the wagon, reined up. He stood up too. Caroline and Derek, walking alongside with Savannah and Charles, moved forward quickly, peering ahead.

  “Is that them?” Savannah asked excitedly.

  “No,” Nathan said slowly. “That’s the slough where we got stuck, but we dragged the wagon on another mile or so into camp.”

  “Besides,” Joshua said, “that’s only two wagons down there. We’ve got three besides this one.”

  “Looks like someone else found our hole,” Derek said. He could see several oxen, but none were yoked to the two wagons, and one of the wagons sat directly in the blackest part of the slough, the very place where they had sunk in so deeply a few days before.

  “Well, let’s go give them a hand,” Joshua said, sitting down again. “They can travel with us if they choose.”

  What they found in the low spot was two families of brothers. The younger had three children, all under ten. The older had a teenaged boy and girl and three
younger than that. Before they ever reached them, they could see what had stopped them here. The lead wagon, the one stuck hub-deep in the drying mud, had a shattered tongue. It had snapped off in a jagged tear just where the long beam had been attached to the forward axle.

  The two families saw the wagon coming from the east and gathered in a circle as the Steeds reached them.

  “Howdy,” Nathan said. He looked at the wagon. “Looks like you got trouble.”

  “You might say that,” the older man drawled. His accent sounded like they might be from Kentucky or Tennessee. Not surprising. Several members from branches of the Church in the southern states had come to Nauvoo over the past two or three years, though none of these people looked familiar to him.

  “Know what you mean,” Derek said. “This is the exact spot where we lost an axle five days ago. ’Bout busted a blood vessel trying to get it out, too.”

  Now the younger brother spoke. “That wouldn’t be your family waiting on the trail about a mile west of here, would it?”

  “The Steeds?”

  “That’s the ones.”

  “Are they all right?” Caroline asked.

  The younger wife pitched in. “They’re all fine. We went looking for help after we got stuck here last night and found them.”

  The second wife was nodding. “That was a welcome sight, I can tell you. Thought we might have to go fifteen or twenty miles to find someone.”

  “And they were real good to us too,” said the first woman. “Took us in and fed us. Real decent folks.”

  “We’re glad to hear they’re all right.” Nathan swung down from his horse and stuck out his hand. “Nathan Steed. This is my brother-in-law Derek Ingalls and my brother Joshua.”

  Joshua hopped down to stand beside Caroline and his two children. “This is my wife, Caroline Steed. This is Savannah and Charles.” He motioned toward the wagon. “Got another little one asleep in the wagon.”

  “Calvin Weller,” the older man responded, taking first Nathan’s hand, then Joshua’s, in a solid grip. “This here’s my brother, Jacob.”