Pillar of Light

by Gerald N. Lund

  Nathan’s eyes widened. “That was you?” he exclaimed.

  Joshua’s smile broadened and now he was laughing softly at Nathan. “Yes, that was me. And yes, Lydia knows. I told her before we left Garden Grove. And no, Caroline doesn’t know anything about this. Only you and Lydia and Mama know. Are there any other questions?”

  Nathan wanted to rub his eyes, make sure that he had come fully awake. Finally all he could think of to say was what he was feeling. “That’s wonderful, Joshua!”

  “Thank you.” Now Joshua’s face pulled into a partial scowl. “I don’t want you jumping to conclusions. I am not ready to become a Mormon. Not by a long shot. Don’t know if I ever will be. I’m just telling you this because I have some questions. Lydia said I should let you know so I could ask you about them, that is, if you’re willing.”

  “Willing?” Nathan blurted. “I am so thrilled right now, you’re lucky I haven’t jumped on your horse and started pounding you on the back.”

  Now any trace of Joshua’s former humor was gone. “That’s what I mean. That’s why I hesitated telling you and the others. You’re going to think this means a lot more than it does.”

  Nathan sobered now too, understanding fully what lay behind that concern. “I know, and I’ll control myself. But if you think I can hide the fact that I am absolutely delighted with this news, then you’ve got your head stuck in a jug.”

  “Delighted is all right,” Joshua conceded. “I just would like to take this at my own speed, all right?”

  Nathan nodded. “I’ll tell you what. I will let you take the lead. I won’t ask you anything, I won’t push you in anyway. When you’re ready to talk, I’ll be here. If you’re not ready, I’ll wait. Fair enough?”

  Gratitude showed in Joshua’s eyes. “That would be the way I would prefer it. I’m not sure what I’m even doing on this path, Nathan. And right now it feels awfully slippery to me.”

  “I understand. You’ve got the lead. It will probably take every ounce of self-control for me to behave myself in this, but I will, Joshua. I promise.”

  Joshua was looking at him directly now, debating whether to say something else.

  Nathan suspected what it was. “I won’t tell anyone unless you say I can. You have my word.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I do think you need to tell Caroline, though. I’ll just say that much.”

  He looked glum. “That’s what Lydia said too. And you’re both right, of course. It’s just that . . .”

  “It will be a bitter disappointment to her if nothing comes of it,” Nathan finished for him.

  “Exactly.”

  Nathan said nothing. This was something Joshua would have to work through in his own mind. Nathan watched him out of the corner of his eye. He was looking away from Nathan, deep in thought. Nathan fought back the almost overwhelming urge to say something more, to ask a dozen questions. This was going to be hard, he suddenly realized. Joshua had dropped a cannonball out of the sky directly onto his head, and now he wasn’t even supposed to say “Ouch.”

  Almost ten minutes passed before Joshua turned to him again. “So are you up to a few questions?”

  Nathan felt a leap of exultation. “I think so,” he said calmly.

  Joshua reached back and lifted the flap on his saddlebag, then fumbled inside. In a moment he withdrew Lydia’s Book of Mormon.

  Nathan shook his head slowly. “So you had it all the time?” he said softly, more to himself than to Joshua.

  There was a grunt but nothing more as he opened the book. Nathan saw that he was using a piece of rawhide string as a bookmark. He found his place, then closed the book again. Awkwardly now, he began to speak. “I’d like to say a couple of things first.”

  “All right.”

  “I may ask some questions that upset you, but I have no desire to offend. I just—”

  Nathan cut that off with a shake of his head. “There’s nothing you can say that will offend me. If I can’t handle it, then I shouldn’t be talking with you.”

  “Good.” Joshua seemed pleased with that. “The second thing is, I won’t be a hypocrite.”

  “A hypocrite. In what way?”

  “Joining the Church just to please everyone. Going along like I accept everything. Acting the part of a believer when there’re too many things I don’t believe.”

  “No, you would not be like that, Joshua. I know that. So what is it you can’t believe?”

  Joshua opened the book now. “Like this, for example. I was reading this last night.” He ran his finger down the page until he found what he wanted. “This is in Alma. But it’s someone named Am-u . . .” He fumbled with the pronunciation.

  “Amulek?”

  “Yes. He’s preaching and here’s what he says.” He began to read, using emphasis to alert Nathan to the things that were bothering him. “ ‘Behold, I say unto you, that I do know that Christ shall come among the children of men, to take upon him the transgressions of his people, and that he shall atone for the sins of the world; for the Lord God hath spoken it; for it is expedient that an atonement should be made; for according to the great plan of the Eternal God, there must be an atonement made, or else all mankind must unavoidably perish.’ ” He stopped, put the string back in, and shut the book. “There’s more, but let’s start there.”

  “Okay. What’s your question?”

  “This atonement, this idea that a Redeemer was chosen before the world to come down and take our sins upon him, don’t you find that inconsistent?”

  “Inconsistent?” That was a word that took Nathan by surprise. “In what way?”

  “You really think one person could take away another’s sins?”

  “I do.”

  “You can’t change the past, Nathan.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You can’t change what has already happened.”

  “I don’t disagree with that. What has that got to do with taking away someone’s sins?”

  “Okay, let me put it this way. You know what I’ve done in the past, what I’ve been.”

  “Yes, but you’ve changed, Joshua.”

  “Of course I have,” he shot back. “That’s what you all keep telling me. So that will make my point even more. The fact that I have changed doesn’t change what I did. It doesn’t make it go away.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  He nodded, seeing that Nathan was concentrating, trying to understand what he was saying. “Even if Christ did suffer, like you say he did, what good does that do for things that are already done? It doesn’t—it can’t!—change one thing.”

  “Oh, Joshua, but it does.”

  “No! Listen, let’s say that I repent, that I change my life, get a new heart, all the things that you people call it. You say Christ will take my sins upon himself and everything will be made right.”

  “Yes, and I think I can explain how.”

  “And I say, that is impossible. It’s trying to change what has already happened.”

  Nathan leaned forward on the saddle horn, determined not to jump in too quickly until he really saw what was in Joshua’s mind.

  Joshua took his silence as a sign of partial victory and went on. “Sure, someone can say to me, ‘It’s all right, Joshua. You’re forgiven.’ But what does that change? Fourteen years ago, in a drunken fit, I went after my wife. She had an infant at that time. That didn’t stop me. I hit her, Nathan. I hit her hard.”

  “I know, Joshua,” Nathan said quietly. “If you remember, I arrived in Independence just a day or two after that. I saw her face.”

  “Yes, I remember.” Bitterness twisted his mouth now. “And I’m supposed to believe that if I repent, it will be like nothing ever happened? That’s ridiculous. Then Jessica would still be my wife and Rachel my daughter. What happens to Caroline and Solomon and all the rest?”

  “I never said it makes things like it never happened, but it can—”

  But Joshua was not about to be detoured. “If
I truly repent, will the Savior take away those scars on your back and chest and make the skin smooth again? No!” And then just that quickly, the flat hardness, the rigidity, was gone and there was a forlorn note in his voice. “If I were to go to the nearest creek right this moment and be baptized, would it bring Olivia back?”

  “No, it won’t bring Olivia back,” Nathan said softly.

  “Then what’s all this talk of redemption, then? I don’t give a fig about having someone look all somber and say, ‘Joshua, your sins are forgiven.’ You find a way to put things back the way they were, and then I’ll be there standing in line to praise your Savior for what he did.” Joshua frowned suddenly as he saw Nathan’s expression. “What? Have I offended you with that comment about the Savior?”

  “What you said saddened me, Joshua, it did not offend me.”

  “Saddened you?” He was suddenly bristling. “I don’t need you feeling sorry for me.”

  “Who said I was feeling sorry for you?” Nathan shot right back at him. “I wasn’t even thinking about you. I was thinking about Olivia. And suddenly I was sad.”

  “Oh.” Joshua looked a little embarrassed. He took a breath. “Anyway, that’s it. You call it redemption. I don’t believe that true redemption is possible.”

  “You’ve thought pretty deeply about this, haven’t you?”

  “Well, the Book of Mormon is full of references to the Atonement and to Christ as our Redeemer. So yeah, I’ve thought a lot about it.”

  “All right, let me try and answer that for you.” Nathan paused, trying to decide how best to begin. “First of all, there’s a difference between redemption and restoration. What you’re talking about is restoration, putting things back as they were before. That is not what redemption is. Christ is the Redeemer because he paid the price for our sins, Joshua. In his sacrifice he took the pain of our sins upon him, he took the effects of our transgressions upon himself.”

  “Isn’t the fact that Olivia is dead one of the effects of my transgression?”

  Nathan took a breath, frustrated that he couldn’t find the words. “Yes, but—”

  At that moment there was a cry from up at the head of the line. “Rider coming in.”

  Both Nathan and Joshua stood in their stirrups, peering ahead. Then Joshua dug his heels into the horse’s flanks. “Let’s go see who it is,” he said as his horse went into a brisk trot. Nathan kicked his horse into a trot as well, relieved for the interruption. This would give him some time to think through how to answer Joshua’s concerns.

  The rider turned out to be Lorenzo Snow, sent to them by Parley and Orson Pratt. Nathan and Joshua and several other men of the company gathered around Brother Snow as he dismounted and strode to President Young. His face was filled with excitement. “We found it, President,” he said before he even reached him. “We found the Grand River and a beautiful place for our settlement.” He described it quickly, not trying to hide the excitement in his voice, moving his hands in grand sweeping gestures as he talked.

  “This is good news, Brother Snow,” Brigham said when he finished. “How much farther is it?”

  “About four miles. We should be there in an hour.”

  “Very good.”

  “President?”

  “Yes.”

  “Elder Parley Pratt is the one who found the place. He has a name he’d like to suggest.” Lorenzo explained quickly about Elder Pratt’s feelings on seeing the river and how the Old Testament example of Moses had come to his mind. “He’d like to call it Mount Pisgah,” Lorenzo concluded.

  Brigham was silent for a moment, considering that; then he smiled. “If it was good enough for Moses, I think that’s good enough for us. Mount Pisgah it shall be.”

  For Melissa Rogers, it started out only as a walk through Nauvoo to enjoy the first really warm spell in almost two weeks of unsettled weather. Carl had the three boys with him, delivering a rare load of bricks to Carthage, and wouldn’t be back until tomorrow. By three o’clock, there had been only two customers in the store the entire day, so she got out Mary Melissa’s baby carriage, got a bonnet for herself and Sarah, and locked the store. She didn’t even bother putting a note out explaining why she had closed early.

  Mary Melissa, who would turn two in July, loved to ride in the carriage and chattered gaily as Sarah, now seven and a half, pushed her along the boardwalk and pointed out things of interest—a beetle pushing a piece of leaf in the dust, a mongrel dog with four puppies trailing along trying to snatch a meal as she walked, a passing wagon pulled by a horse and a mule hitched awkwardly together. Melissa was barely aware of her children as she walked along. Everywhere her eyes were drawn filled her with foreboding. Nauvoo was a city in the process of dying. The public dedication of the temple on the first of the month had galvanized the opposition. The Mormons were not going to leave after all, went up the cry; otherwise why were they dedicating their temple? Rumors swarmed as thickly as mosquitoes along the riverbanks. Men were being caught and beaten outside the city. Haystacks had been burned, cattle shot. It was Missouri and Carthage and Warsaw and Yelrome all over again. Carl, openly disdainful, said that if one story in ten were actually true it would surprise him. She had retorted that even if only one story in twenty were true, she was growing increasingly more terrified.

  The weather had at last turned warm, at least for a time. The roads were drying again, and Nauvoo was on the move. She felt like weeping as she passed house after house that stood deserted. Here and there was scattered furniture in the front yard, along with boxes of personal goods—abandoned when the wagon filled up and there was room for nothing more, the owners not even bothering to return them to the house. Across the street stood a two-story frame home with a front window broken out and the door ajar. It was like a gaping corpse. Amid the abandoned, deserted homes were the others with wagons and teams standing out front and with people scurrying back and forth with boxes and barrels and bedding.

  As they reached Parley Street, Melissa was amazed. The lineup for the ferry at the west end of Parley Street, where the ferry landing was, stretched back for half a mile, almost all the way to Durphy Street. Wagons of various sizes stood in three parallel lines. Oxen, mules, and horses stood with heads down and eyes half-closed. People milled around talking. Many lay on the grassy shoulders of the street. Some were soundly asleep.

  She shook her head, finding the sight astonishing. All these people, and that was with the ferry running day and night for the last week. And the word was that the ferry at Fort Madison, upriver a few miles, was also going around the clock. No wonder the city seemed deserted.

  She raised a hand against the afternoon sun. Though it was almost a mile from where she stood, she could see the bluffs that marked the Iowa side of the river. It looked like a hillside of teeming ants. Tiny black figures moved everywhere. The wagon covers appeared to be seedpods carried on the backs of the tiny insects to some unseen anthill.

  “Mama?”

  She turned. “Yes, Sarah.”

  “Is everybody in Nauvoo going?” she said.

  Everyone but us. But she didn’t say it. She just smiled. “No, Sarah, many people are going, but a lot are staying, just like us.”

  “Oh.”

  Melissa couldn’t tell if Sarah was disappointed or relieved. “And there are people moving in too. We won’t be alone.”

  “Papa says the new people are making a group so they can be strong.”

  “Yes, that’s right. They’re calling themselves the ‘new citizens.’ ” She didn’t add that the primary motive behind that designation was a fear that the anti-Mormons might not distinguish between Mormon and non-Mormon when they came in looking for a chance to expropriate property.

  Melissa had turned back toward the bluffs now, her eyes looking for something other than the people who swarmed over them. But she was too far away to pick it out. Perhaps if she was actually down at the river’s side. Then a thought struck her with such power that it nearly took her breath away. S
he rocked back a little. And then, before her rational side took control again, she turned to Sarah. “Sarah, let me push Mary Melissa. Stay right with me.”

  The ferryman just stared at her, wondering if she had had too much of the sun.

  She bit her lip, fighting not to scream at him. “I have money.”

  He shook his head in disbelief, gesturing toward the line that stretched back from the river. “It ain’t a question of money, ma’am.”

  “Look, I have to get across. I have no wagons. Just the three of us. And we’ll be coming back later today.”

  “Coming back won’t be any problem at all,” he said shortly. “You can have the ferry to yourself if you want. But these people have all been waiting for hours. I can’t—”

  A man beside the last wagon loaded on the ferry was listening. “We can squeeze her on with us,” he called.

  “Oh, thank you,” Melissa cried. She turned back to the ferryman.

  He finally nodded. “The baby carriage will have to stay here. I’ll keep it there by the hut. That’ll be seventy-five cents for the round trip.”

  She reached inside her pocket and withdrew the small purse. She gave him a dollar. As he reached for the box where he kept the fares, she shook her head. “Thank you for letting me go.”

  The spring grasses had nearly obscured the gravestone, and if she hadn’t known to look for the solitary oak tree, she likely would not have found it. While Sarah and Mary Melissa played tag, Melissa patiently cleared the grass away. When she was done, she looked up. “Sarah?”

  “Yes, Mama?”

  “Why don’t you and Mary find some wildflowers for Grandpa’s grave.”

  “Yes, Mama.” Immediately they set off. It would not be a hard task. The hillside was covered with yellows and purples and pinks.

  She turned back, raising a hand to wipe away the dust from the letters etched into the stone.

  Benjamin Steed

  Born: May 18, 1785

  Died: February 9, 1846

  He found joy in the service of the Lord.

  He was beloved of his family.

  As she reached the last line of text, she spoke it aloud. “ ‘Good-bye until we meet again.’ ”