Saints

by Orson Scott Card

  "A little."

  "You can bail. And look! There's part of your menagerie. Two by two. Only they're going out instead of coming in."

  Charlie looked where Don Carlos pointed. Two women were emerging from the house. He grimaced. "The Clinton sisters."

  Still upside down, Don Carlos intoned, "Like blossoms, they turn their skirts upward to the warm face of the ground."

  "They visit whenever I'm not there. Conspiring with my mother to get me to marry."

  "Not necessarily a bad idea. Do you get to choose which one you want?"

  "I have things to do before I get married."

  "Who scrubs your back in the tub, Charlie?"

  Without thinking, Charlie blurted out the truth. "My mother."

  Don Carlos laughed, then rolled over and looked at Charlie with an earnest, comical expression. "Those Clinton sisters, they look like they could bear fifteen children each and not hardly notice it."

  "That's what I'm afraid of," Charlie said.

  Don Carlos got quickly to his feet. "Are you now, Charlie? Do you think this factory makes you a man, because you can sign your name and walls go up? Well, let me tell you a secret. You aren't even here until you have children. You don't even exist. But when you've got them, when they love you with their whole hearts and trust you with their very lives, Charlie, then you could watch a hundred factories like this burn, and you could walk away whistling." Don Carlos jumped through the wall onto the ground outside. "I don't know what you think you've got to do before you get married, but whatever it is, it isn't worth a damn." He grinned and tipped his hat. "If I've offended you, sir, it makes me very glad." Then he turned around and loped away down the road toward home.

  Charlie stayed in the building for a while, deliberately not thinking about Sally Clinton. She was all wrong for him, whatever Don Carlos said. He didn't need a baby factory, he needed a rich man's wife because by God he was going to be a rich man. Sally Clinton. pretty as she was, had the manners of the working class. Charlie had been around enough moneyed men and ladies to know the difference. Sally simply wouldn't do, not in the future Charlie had planned for himself.

  He tried to admire the factory to take his mind off Sally. But Don Carlos had taken away the pleasure of it. The wind picked up a little. Charlie cursed the weather and went into the house.

  Mother was ready for him when he came into the house. "It's apparent, Charlie, that for all your good judgment about other things, you are not a good judge of women."

  "I take it that Sally Clinton came to call."

  "You know she did," Anna said. "I saw you and Don Carlos notice the Clinton sisters when they left. You didn't even have the courtesy to wave. Charlie, why do you suppose Sally and Harriette come only when you're not at home?"

  Charlie knew why. Because Sally didn't want to burden him with her affection if he didn't want it. So instead she burdened him with his own mother's remonstrances.

  "Charlie, a man needs a wife who is strong where he is weak, and who needs him where he is strong. That way they can face everything together. There are hundreds of women in Nauvoo who have just the strength you need. But none loves you more than Sally Clinton."

  "What is it that Sally Clinton has that I don't have?"

  "Practical good sense, that's what. An eye for what is possible. For the cost of things."

  "I have been figuring costs and income and profits and losses since I was little."

  "I wasn't talking about money."

  "Mother," Dinah said from the cluttered nest where she sewed every day. "You're doing your cause more harm than good."

  "Everyone is wiser than I am," Anna said.

  "Except me, of course," said Charlie.

  And now, from his easel and paintpots by the window, John Kirkham spoke. "I'm not the best one to give advice on marriage, Charlie, but will you listen to me a moment?"

  "No," Charlie said.

  "Yes he will," said Anna.

  "There are two kinds of women that a man can marry," said John. "The kind that's stronger than he is, and the kind that's weaker. I've lived with both, Charlie. It's hard to live with a strong woman, because she makes you afraid sometimes, and sometimes you feel like you aren't in control of your life. But let me tell you, boy, it's a damn sight better than living with a weak woman, because many a man isn't as good as his woman, but I never knew a husband who was better than his wife."

  "I don't need advice on marriage from you, sir," Charlie said coldly. "Or from any of you. There's not one of you who was particularly good at choosing a mate for yourselves, and it takes some gall for you to presume to choose a wife for me."

  It was a rebuke his parents had no answer for, Charlie knew. Only after a few moments of painful silence, however, did he remember that Dinah was in the room. And when he looked at her, the expression on her face told him that he had unwittingly hurt most deeply the one that he would never wish to hurt at all. "Dinah, I'm sorry, I didn't mean -- "

  She shook her head and looked at her sewing.

  "Dinah, I know you never chose your husband, I didn't mean you.

  She looked up at him with eyes full of tears, and spoke with a voice husky with held-back pain. "Damn you if you don't marry her, Charlie. Damn you for thinking you're better than her."

  Charlie looked at his sister in shock for what seemed like several minutes. Then he fled the room, fled the house, and ran. Uphill, cross-lots, the most difficult path he could find, all the while thinking how unfair it was, they were all against him, Don Carlos and Mother and her husband and even of all people Dinah, and what possible right did they have to try to push him into marrying someone who was beneath him just because she was good and strong and pretty and loved him more than he deserved --

  And when he came to that thought he stopped cold. She loved him more than he deserved, that's what he was running from. Any woman who actually loves me can't be good enough. He remembered that evening in Manchester, when he had desired her. He desired her still. Be honest, Charlie, admit it to yourself. You watched her closely all the way across the Atlantic. You knew every time she smiled at someone else, and even though you were saying to yourself, That's just the sort of lower-class man she should marry, you were jealous as hell.

  Charlie looked around and discovered that he had run to the temple site. He studied the flagged and posted ground where the temple was to be and he imagined it being built, the rising stone of the walls grey in the overcast light, the scaffolding climbing it like winter ivy, looking dead. But it was still only a dream, and the vision would not stay. He turned from the place, gazed down at his own hopeful factory, the new wood still bright, and understood something he had not really seen before. The shacks and cabins of Nauvoo were scattered like dirt clods across the frozen ground. But the place was full of seeds. He was one of those seeds. Yet it was as Don Carlos said, he didn't really exist until he bore fruit.

  Suddenly, as he looked out over the city, it changed. The pitiful curling threads of smoke from kitchen fires thickened, became great belches from furnace stacks; the greyish, weathering cabins became red-brick factories and row houses, or graceful mansions like Hulme's; the streets were cobbled, were edged with tame trees, and carriages clopped noisily along. He could hear the laughter and the energetic talk of the businessmen, the cries of tradesmen. It was the hidden city, the one that would grow from the ten thousand seeds here. Didn't they see that he was more than just a common man? Didn't they know that the voices in the future city were speaking to him, the laughter was at his jests? People craved his advice -- should we invest in the railway, Brother Kirkham? Or the textile mill? Should we bring the Pennsylvania coal down the Ohio, or ship it the longer, cheaper way, round the lakes? Will you sign with me so I can get my start, Brother Kirkham? Here's the interest on your loan, Brother Kirkham. I can repay you the money, Brother Kirkham, but never the faith you showed in me when no one else believed.

  I am needed here. My flame can ignite this city. Why else did Joseph g
et Ullery to invest in me? It's industry, it's business that this city lacks to come alive, and I can do it, because I have seen the vision of the smoky, bright-faced, laughing City of God, and I know how to build it. There's more to life than just fathering babies. If that's all I care about, I'll end up a failure like Don Carlos.

  It was a cruel judgment, and it wasn't true. Don Carlos wasn't a businessman, but somehow he still wasn't a failure. There was something wrong with Charlie's reasoning, but he couldn't think what it was.

  "I'd say he looks more like a sentinel who dozed off standing up."

  It took a moment for Charlie to realize that these voices were not part of his vision. In that moment the woman spoke, and her voice explored him as deep as the fountains of desire. "I'd say he's more like a tree that grew up overnight."

  "In this cold?" asked the man.

  "Blossomed in the morning with frost on his limbs, bore fruit this afternoon, and now shines ripe, with golden fruit and golden leaves."

  "I don't know about him being a tree, Emma, but I'd say he's deaf as a post."

  Charlie recognized the voice now, and the vision fled away west, over the Mississippi into the haze of the far shore; the shanties were back, with only his new factory bright as a spark in the cold grey ashes of Nauvoo. He turned around. Joseph and Emma were not twenty feet off, with a few dozen others trailing away up toward the temple site.

  "Don't move, Charlie," Joseph said. "You make such a pretty figure there."

  "I'm sorry," Charlie said. "I didn't know that you were here."

  "I know. We were so quiet." The people behind the Prophet laughed at that. They all looked so small and uncertain behind Brother Joseph.

  "I was looking at the city," Charlie said.

  "And which city did you see?" asked Joseph. "The one I see, or the one that's there?"

  So Joseph knew that Charlie had been transfixed by vision. "The one you see, I think."

  Joseph threw an arm around his shoulder. "It's a rare man who can see the true city in spite of the buildings. Everything you need for happiness is here."

  Against his will Charlie thought of Sally Clinton, who also burned, who also was alive in this grey winter. If I have not quenched her, Charlie decided, I will warm myself at her fire. "Should I get married. Brother Joseph?"

  If Joseph was surprised at the non sequitur, he did not show it. "By all means, Brother Charlie. Don't put it off until you find the perfect woman. She's already married." He gave Emma an affectionate squeeze, and cold-faced Emma loosed a smile of surprising warmth -- it was brief, though, like a flash of light from a distant lantern. Charlie compared this distant woman to Sally, and thought that his own home would be a happier place than Joseph's. Sally Kirkham. The Prophet had said, "By all means." So after all the advice he had rejected, it turned out to be the will of God on this day of vision.

  "Will you come see the plan of the temple with us, Charlie?" asked the Prophet.

  Charlie shook his head. "I've left my own work too long already, if you understand me." He couldn't help smiling.

  Joseph nodded. "Don't be shy. Ask her right out. If it's the will of God, she'll say yes without so much as a breath."

  "Yes, sir," Charlie said. He couldn't keep himself from grinning now, and Joseph laughed back.

  "Does he remind you of anybody, Emma?"

  Emma also smiled. "I can't decide if he looks like the man I ran off and married, or more like a silly-faced pig in a wallow."

  "It's the same look, Emma," Joseph said.

  "I know."

  Joseph winked at Charlie, then turned and led Emma and the troupe of disciples back up toward the temple site. The afternoon sun picked that moment to come under the clouds and light up the posts and flags that marked the building's dimensions. They seemed to grow in the light, rise tall and golden, as if the temple already stood there -- one more sign in a day filled with signs. After so long a silence, God was fairly shouting at Charlie today. On the one hand, the damnation Dinah promised if he failed to act; on the other hand, the Prophet's assurance of happiness if he acted. He watched the Prophet and the fiery temple a moment longer, then bounded down the hill in great, leg-breaking leaps; he had no fear of hurting himself today.

  The Clintons lived in a mud-chinked split-log cabin in the poorest part of Nauvoo. There were some snowflakes getting tossed about in the unsteady breeze by the time Charlie got there -- they caught sunlight and looked cheerful to him. That was the last cheerful thing he'd see for a while: it was Harriette who came to the door when he knocked. Some expressionless women looked placid as cows, but Harriette seemed more austere than that. More dangerous. Charlie tipped his hat and greeted her. Coldly she invited him in.

  Inside, the single room was virtually bare -- just straw ticks on the floor for beds, a single trunk that served for wardrobe and everything else, and a chimney in one end of the room that warmed not at all ten feet from it. A few snowflakes drifted in under the ill-fitting roof, and there were patches of mud on the packed-earth floor, a witness to what real weather did to the inside of the house. Harriette was wearing her warmest cloak. In a corner near the fire sat Sally, holding her youngest brother on her lap. Their mother was cooking at the fire. "How do you do?" Charlie said. No one answered. "Is Brother Clinton working?" he asked -- it was always a good sign when a man wasn't home during the day.

  It was Sister Clinton who answered. "My husband's across the river, Brother Charlie, on the Iowa side, in Zarahemla. They have a wee farm there, he and the boys, but we're to stay here this winter because the cabin's more snug.

  It must be a hell of a cabin on the other side, Charlie decided, if this one was better.

  "River's freezing over," Mother Clinton added. "If it freezes hard enough, they say we can cross like a road."

  "That would be nice," Charlie said. He turned to Sally. "I've been told when the river freezes, there's skating. Would you like that?"

  Sally said nothing. Her little brother said, excitedly, "I would."

  "Then we'll have to go sometime," Charlie told him. At least someone here was glad to talk to him. But it was Sally he would have to win over, and he refused to be parried. "Sister Sally, I saw you visit at my house today." He glanced at Harriette. " Both of you."

  It was Harriette who answered. "We didn't think you saw us. If you saw us, we thought, you surely would have waved or come to see us."

  Charlie looked at his hands. "I'm sorry. I should have. I should have come to see you here, long before today."

  "I wish you had," said Mother Clinton. "We've missed you."

  Sally and Harriette immediately glared at her for having proved the weak spot in their uniform hostility. It was all the proof Charlie needed that their coldness was not genuine.

  "I stayed away," Charlie said, "because I was afraid."

  Sally looked hurt. "Am I so terrible that you have to be afraid of me?"

  Charlie knew from long experience in talking with women and hearing women talk that if a man once started defending his motives, he was lost. So he changed the subject. "I was walking on Temple Hill today, and who do you think joined me there?"

  Sally looked away, feigning indifference. Mother Clinton, however, could not resist a story. "Who?" she asked.

  "Brother Joseph. I was standing there, looking out over the city, and I think the Spirit was with me, and I think he knew it. He came up and said to me, 'Everything you need for happiness is here, Charlie.' It was as if he heard my thoughts. Do you know what I was thinking of then, Sister Sally?"

  "I'm sure I don't know," she said.

  "I was thinking of you. Sister Sally. And do you know what Joseph said then?"

  "I'm sure I -- don't -- "

  "That's what you said before, Sister Sally, but it isn't quite true, is it? You know what he said -- because what he said gave me the courage to come here."

  Sally turned to him, and the coldness was gone, replaced by uncertainty and, yes, hope. It did Charlie's heart good, to see her so ho
peful of him. "Why should you need courage to come to me?" Sally asked.

  "Because of what I've known I would do, next time I saw you, even though I have no reason to hope you'd say yes."

  Charlie heard Harriette breathe quickly at the door, and now Sally's expression changed to one of quiet repose. She was sure now why he was there. "What did Brother Joseph say that -- gave you courage?"

  "'Don't be shy,' he told me. 'Ask her right out. If it's the will of God, she'll say yes without so much as a breath.'"