"I can do my ciphering." Thump. "I'm not mad at him, either." Clack. "I spent all day today bullying people into buying more advertising."
"Good!"
"I sold fifty dollars' worth. All on credit, but I can do it. I got up at five o'clock. The damn chickens weren't even up yet. I set all the type before nine. I didn't even come home for dinner. Near walked my butt off."
Charlie tried a joke. "You're right, it's half gone."
"Shut up, Charlie." Don Carlos tore up the overprinted sheet. "I hated it. Do you have to work like that? No. You have your soapmakers and your candlemakers and your wheelwrights but how often do you ever have to go ream out a hub yourself?"
"I wouldn't even know where to start."
"So where's my two-thousand-dollar loan from Flint-heart Ullery? I'm Joseph's own brother, ain't I? Oh, never mind. I had it out with Joseph yesterday, when he told me about you. He laid it out plain as a plow track. Charlie Kirkham is serious. Charlie Kirkham gets things done: Charlie Kirkham has already made himself near rich with his little homestead factory, at least compared to other folk here, and you haven't even got the Times and Seasons breaking even yet. You tell me why you have a right to compare yourself to Charlie Kirkham and expect to get treated the same as him."
"Don Carlos, I'm sorry.
"It's just time I grew up. That's all. I've been playing around the way I did when I was ten. My whole life I've been a little kid." He looked hard at Charlie. "You were never a little kid at all. I had to teach you how."
"I know."
"So now I'm trying to learn how to be a grown-up. My wife is very impressed with me the last few days, I've been so dependable. Damn dull, though. Stuck in this cellar all night. The place is so damp that I have to store the paper upstairs, carry it down every time I print. One good thing, though. I can leave the ink open, and it won't dry out." Don Carlos laughed.
Charlie tried to laugh, too. Don Carlos knew at once that it was forced. "I guess I've kind of wrecked things, haven't I? I guess we're kind of through playing, aren't we?"
Charlie wanted to put his hand on Don Carlos's shoulder, but he figured it would be too patronizing or affectionate or just silly somehow. So he didn't, just said, "I never had a friend but you, Don Carlos."
"Well, now you've got Joseph." Don Carlos turned back to the press and squared his shoulders to his work with a finality that said the interview was over. "Joseph's the best friend a man could have. You've just traded your mule for a racing horse."
"Didn't have a trade in mind."
Thump. Clack. Thump. Clack. Charlie gave up and went outside.
Joseph spent all morning counseling with a man who had just been excommunicated for adultery and wife-beating and he was worn out by the time Charlie slipped in with the morning mail. Charlie walked quietly and quickly, laid down the letters within easy reach but not where they would demand immediate attention. Deftly he slid one letter a few inches toward Joseph and said, "From Hyrum," then began immediately to leave. Joseph pretended not to be paying attention, but he reveled in the luxury of having an efficient yet unobtrusive clerk. I wish I'd had an English clerk years ago, thought Joseph. But he knew that Charlie wasn't just English. It was one thing to be deft with papers; it was quite another thing to understand money. And Charlie understood money. If I'd had him back in Kirtland our bank might not have failed and the Church might be prosperous today. But Charlie was only a little boy back then. It takes the Lord time to raise up the men and women who can help me. Women who can help me. Dinah.
Thinking about Dinah wouldn't do. He couldn't spend his days thinking about his wives. Though the truth was that Dinah was the only one who tempted him to reverie.
He was startled to realize that Charlie was waiting at the door.
"Charlie?"
"Brother Joseph. do you have a moment?"
It was hard to pretend he was busy when he had been leaning back with his eyes closed. "Yes."
"It's Don Carlos."
"Don't pay any attention to him. He's a little jealous of you but it'll pass."
"I'm worried about him. He isn't well. But to please you he's near killing himself with work."
"A little work won't kill him."
Charlie's voice grew insistent. "I'm telling you that I know him better than anyone, and he isn't strong right now. He'd die if he thought it would please you."
Joseph looked at Charlie and nodded. "It wouldn't please me, Charlie. But I'm glad if he's trying to do something. Even if it is out of envy. Even if I know perfectly well that just like a dozen times before he'll get tired of it and go back to just getting by. I'm also glad that you love him. Charlie, because so do I, more than I probably ought to, more than is probably good for him."
Charlie nodded and started to leave.
"Brother Charlie," Joseph said. "Would you mind staying while I read Hyrum's letter? I'll want to send an answer to him right away."
Charlie busied himself getting pen and ink and paper while Joseph opened Hyrum's letter.
"By the way," Charlie said, "Mayor Bennett is downstairs."
"Oh? What's he doing?"
"Sucking on a tomato."
Joseph laughed. Bennett had been trying to get the Saints to grow tomatoes, so of course he had to go around eating them to remind people. "One thing about Bennett. Whatever he's selling, he buys himself."
Then Joseph started to read, and by coincidence Hyrum was writing about Bennett, too. Joseph had heard enough nonsense from Hyrum against John Bennett; he skipped down the letter to find where the interesting things began. But the interesting things were still about Bennett. The whole letter was about Bennett. And it wasn't just vague suspicions now.
"Charlie, would you be willing to go down and invite Mayor Bennett up to my office?"
Charlie got up.
"No, wait. Is anyone else down there?"
"Brother Sidney's holding a meeting in the parlor."
"I'll go down." With Charlie following after, Joseph went briskly down the stairs. Sidney's meeting was droning on. They could do with a little excitement. So Joseph stopped in plain view of both the parlor and the drawing room, and in his loudest voice addressed John Bennett before he could finish his greeting.
"John Bennett, where's your wife?"
If there was one thing Joseph Smith did well, it was bringing off an effect. With that single loud question he turned Charlie and Sidney and everyone in the meeting into joint accusers of John Bennett, and Bennett, half-standing with a dripping tomato in his hand, was as cornered as a coon in a dogpack. Only now, with all the people watching, did Joseph begin to let himself get angry. No sense wasting anger to no use. Now there was a use.
"I'm waiting for an answer, Mayor Bennett."
Joseph watched Bennett decide whether to lie or confess. It made him angrier, for Joseph had thought Bennett the sort of man who didn't have to decide. He had believed in John Bennett, and right now, in this moment of hesitation, Bennett was unraveling Joseph's trust. Plainly everything that Hyrum said was true. It would be -- Joseph had never known Hyrum to tell a lie in his life except when Joseph asked him to.
Bennett's decision was made. It would be confession. Tears came into his eyes and he stood straight, poised to take his punishment manfully. "I see my youthful mistakes have come back to haunt me."
"Your wife, Mayor Bennett."
"I don't know where she is," Bennett said. The crowd murmured; it was well known till now that Bennett was a bachelor.
"Do you care?" Joseph asked.
"I hope -- with all my heart that she is well."
"And your children, Mr. Bennett?"
"How are they? If you know, it's cruel of you not to tell me."
Suddenly Joseph roared at him. "How dare you speak to me of cruelty! There is nothing lower in the world than a man who gives his oath to a woman, fathers children on her, then abandons her to fend for herself, without money, without friends, while you have lacked for neither. There are animals who eat
their own young -- that is the species you belong to, Mr. Bennett."
Bennett withered, but his abject posture came a little too late, went a little too far to be believed, though Joseph realized that even ten minutes ago he would have believed it. Now that the lie was known, Joseph could plainly see that he was a habitual liar. No wonder Emma mistrusted him. No wonder Hyrum hated him. But so many times my friends have been hated, I have been hated for no reason but envy. I thought it was envy again. I thought God told me this man was true.
"Am I not to have a chance to justify myself?" asked Bennett.
"Justify?"
"Can't we suppose that some of the blame at least belongs to the wife?"
Joseph reached out his hand and slapped Bennett across the face -- not hard, just enough to silence him, to humiliate him. "Don't make me despise you more than I already do," Joseph said. "Any word you speak against that good and injured woman is a lie, and doubles your guilt before the Lord. Do you think Hyrum and William did not verify that she was blameless before they wrote to me? Where you lived in Ohio it was public knowledge that you were an adulterer repeatedly, and she forgave you time and again before at last you left her. I owe you my life, John Bennett, but you make me ashamed of it."
That was enough. Here was where the scene should end. Let the word of this spread through Nauvoo, let Bennett have time to reveal himself through what he chose to do. Joseph turned to leave. Not upstairs, but out of the house, so he could close a door on John Bennett.
But Bennett wouldn't let the door close. He followed Joseph onto the porch and then fell to his knees, crying out as if in agony. "Oh, Joseph, I've wanted to confess it to you all along, but I hadn't the courage, you must know how I long for your forgiveness, for the Lord to -- "
Joseph was furious. Bennett had broken the effect. He was crying his confession on the public street, and the initiative was taken from Joseph. It would be Bennett who was talked about now, Bennett at the heart of the story. Only now did Joseph realize that Bennett was his match in managing events. Well, Bennett, I will not let you turn this to advantage.
"Get him out of my sight and hearing before he adds blasphemy to his other sins!" Joseph cried.
At once the men from the meeting began to manhandle Bennett toward the street. He was spraying tears and spittle on them all as he writhed and wept and cried aloud in grief. Joseph stood clear of the scene, folded his arms and watched, letting nothing distract him. A few men came up to him and tried to ask questions, but Joseph ignored them, kept his eyes on Bennett. As long as Joseph held perfectly still, he would be stronger than Bennett in the way people saw this event. If he broke and talked to someone, he would immediately disappear into the crowd of onlookers, and it would all be Bennett's story.
Yet even as Joseph thought of this as a contest between him and Bennett, he could not help but wonder if Bennett's repentance might be real. He had been too long in the habit of trusting Bennett's advice, trusting Bennett's version of what was happening. Hadn't Bennett been right, time and again, when Joseph's other, more naive advisers had been wrong? Hadn't Bennett given his all to the Church, loyally? Before Bennett was out of sight, Joseph found himself hoping that somehow Bennett would bring it off, that somehow Bennett would make it possible for Joseph to trust him again.
Only after Bennett was out of sight did Joseph allow himself to move. Still he talked to no one. He walked to his house. Charlie opened the door and stepped in before him, smoothly closed the door after him when he was inside, so that Joseph did not have to touch the door at all. The scene had gone as well as Joseph could make it go. Bennett had made sure that what was talked about most in Nauvoo was the extremity of his grief. But from this moment on, a picture would remain in everyone s mind, Joseph Smith standing in judgment while Mayor Bennett was led away weeping. Joseph might want to trust Bennett again, but he wanted to make sure that there was not the slightest confusion in the city of Nauvoo about who was Prophet and who was not.
Emma was waiting for him in the parlor. Her eyes were bright with triumph. "I was right," she said.
"You were right that he's a liar," Joseph said quietly. "But you were wrong to think that's all he is."
"I know. He's an adulterer, too."
Her point was so telling that Joseph had to laugh. "Yes, he even found a sin to commit that no one had thought to accuse him of. He's a resourceful fellow, isn't he?"
Emma had not meant to amuse him. "How could you make a man like that Assistant President of Christ's church?"
That was not an amusing question. It was still less amusing that she asked it in front of his clerk. Charlie was trustworthy, but he was also naive, and it was cruel of Emma to openly question the Prophet's authority. "I don't always know what a man is," Joseph said. "Most times I only know what a man does."
"Why didn't you ask the Lord?"
"I thought the Lord had already told me. I reckon I misunderstood." He looked at Emma steadily, as if to say enough.
She didn't think it was enough. "For near a year Hyrum and I and half a dozen others have been trying to tell you that. But you trusted him and not us."
"Emma," Joseph said, "I trust you and Hyrum always to be loyal. But I'll never trust anybody to be right, because the minute I do that I might as well auction off my brains, I'd have no more use for them. The Lord didn't call me to be prophet in order to make your mistakes. He called me as prophet in order to make my mistakes. You were partly right and I was partly wrong. It's happened before, and it'll happen again, but it'll never happen on anything the Lord tells me direct. Do you understand that, Emma? Just because Joseph Smith Junior makes a mistake doesn't mean that God makes mistakes. It just means that I'm not a puppet."
"Neither am I," Emma said. "I'll say what I like."
"Say it to the walls, then. Come on, Charlie."
Joseph walked through the house to the back door, Charlie at his heels. Once they were well away from the house, Joseph stopped. "That's all, Brother Charlie. You might as well go home and tend to your own affairs for the rest of the day."
Charlie was surprised. "Didn't you want me to come with you? I had work to do in the house -- "
"Charlie, if I left you there in the house you would have had a conversation with Emma. And in the course of that conversation, whether you wanted to or not, you would have had to decide whether you were her friend or mine. Whichever way you decided, your life wouldn't be very easy in Nauvoo afterward."
"Thanks, then. But I can go with you wherever you're going."
"Where I'm going now, you wouldn't be useful."
Charlie looked a little hurt as he went his way, but there was no helping that. Joseph couldn't very well say to him, Sorry, but I'm going to visit your sister in her cabin and you can't come along because there's a good chance we might spend part of the visit in bed.
Joseph saddled up a mare and was leading her out the stable door before Porter Rockwell reached him. "Howdy," said Port.
"Howdy," said Joseph.
"You gonna wait for me to saddle up, or are you gonna make me ride bareback?"
"Don't want you with me, Port."
Port walked up close to Joseph and in his high, piping voice said, "I know where you're gain' whenever you don't want me with you, Brother Joseph. Furthermore I know that these are not common whores. They are the finest women in the Church, and you are a man of God, and so I put two and two together. Or maybe I put one and about fourteen together, by my present count. With what I know, Brother Joseph, if you couldn't trust me you'd be readin' all about it in the Warsaw paper. But you ain't."
"No, Port, I ain't."
"Now if you'd just let me saddle my horse and ride along with you, I can do a lot to help you get to where you're goin' without a troop of people knowin right where you're headed."
"Saddle up, Port. A man's a fool if he thinks he can keep a secret from you."
They rode north toward old Commerce, Illinois, passing through the shanty town where the latest immigrants a
ll lived. A lot of people, mostly children, waved cheerfully from the most miserable homes Joseph had ever seen. We've got to get more money in this town before fall, Joseph thought, or we'll have real suffering from the cold.
At the place where the city plat showed Joseph Street, they rode down into a ravine. The spring rains had near filled it, but now it was just standing water with so many mosquitoes it has hard to breathe without eating them. They rode along the edge of the water, where the ground was firmest, until the ravine opened up to level, ground, north and east of the city. Wheatfields and woods. They walked their horses south a ways; then Port stopped with the animals in a grove of trees and Joseph walked on through the trees and underbrush until the last patch of open ground before Dinah's house. I am a complete fool, thought Joseph. It's broad daylight, and who knows who might be hunting rabbits. But at least he had sense enough not to skulk. He walked boldly to Dinah's door and knocked. If anyone was watching, they couldn't guess he had anything to hide from the way he walked.
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