by Rosalyn Eves
Samuel steps away from the wagon. Without looking at me, he says, “I’m going to need to take one of the horses back to Mona to get help.”
Then he leaves me, standing ankle-deep in the mud, with dirt crusting over my fingers and the hem of my dress, not nearly as triumphant as I thought to be at finally nettling Samuel Willard.
* * *
* * *
It takes perhaps an hour or more of waiting with Vilate Ann, huddled together beneath a nearby tree, before rescuers come with Samuel from Mona. After that, though Samuel does not outright ignore me—he is exquisitely polite when he has to talk to me—he’s distant. He still cracks jokes with Vilate Ann, but I might as well be invisible. More than once, I’ve begun to apologize but caught the words back. Samuel does not seem to mind our new distance. If he does not, why should I?
The rain passes and we manage to reach Santaquin that night, and, in cleaner clothes and on drier roads the following two days, we make good time, reaching the Salt Lake valley just as Tuesday afternoon edges into evening.
Samuel drives directly to the Union Pacific station.
Vilate Ann says, “Are you sure you don’t want to stay at my brother’s house tonight? You would be welcome.”
My eyes flick to Samuel, but he is busy unloading my trunk from the back of the wagon.
“I’ve been a week on the road already. I should go—the baby may already be here.” I send up a tiny prayer, asking for Rebekka to be all right. And there’s no need to delay—I stocked up my bag with provisions the day before, when we stopped by a market.
“But you haven’t seen anything of Salt Lake City,” Vilate Ann says.
“I’m not here to enjoy myself,” I say. It sounds like something Mama would say, and for a moment the sting of missing her pricks at my throat.
After a rather teary goodbye from Vilate Ann, who promises to write every day (but will likely forget), and a polite but distant farewell from Samuel, I grip my carpetbag in one hand and the handle of my trunk in the other and march to the ticket window outside the small station.
“To Ogden,” I tell the man at the ticket counter, pleased that my voice does not waver. I carefully count out the bills for the fare from my purse. In Ogden, I will purchase a second ticket to carry me east all the way to Cheyenne.
“Last train is at nine twenty-five p.m.,” he says, and I nod. I hand over my money, and he stamps a paper ticket with the date and gives it to me with my change. Though it’s still two hours from departure, a dozen or so people are already waiting, sitting on long wooden benches beside the track behind the station.
Samuel and Vilate Ann are gone. I can just see the back of their wagon at the end of the street. I drag my trunk to a bench and sit, arranging my skirts around me and settling my carpetbag on my lap.
I take a deep breath, then two.
I have never been so far from people and places I know.
I remind myself: There is nothing so scary about this. I know where I am.
If I were to look out from the front of the station, I could see the building site where the walls of the Salt Lake City temple are rising, only a few blocks away. If the worst happens, if the train fails to appear, I could stop anyone in the street and ask them to direct me to a Mormon bishop, who could help me find a place to stay—perhaps even find Samuel’s brother’s house.
I will not be afraid.
I can do this.
The train comes rushing into the station a few minutes after nine, belching steam and squealing on its iron rails. I’ve never seen a real train before, much less been on one.
I am not sure what to do, so I watch the other passengers. I see how they ask porters or male family members to carry their trunks aboard, and they follow with their bags.
A uniformed porter stops beside me, seeing my puzzled face. “Need help, miss?”
“Thank you,” I say gratefully, and he lifts my trunk with practiced hands.
“Where to?”
“The train?” I say, rather stupidly, then blush. I dislike feeling ignorant, and everything about this moment has me out of my depth.
“May I see your ticket? I need to know which car.”
I pull out my ticket to see that “second class” is printed across it. The porter glances at it and nods. “First time on the railroad?”
“Yes, sir,” I say.
“You can sit in any of the passenger coaches.” He gestures to a couple of cars tucked behind the baggage car. “The last coach is first-class, and your ticket doesn’t cover that. I’ll be taking your trunk to the storage car; another porter will fetch it out for you when you arrive.”
With a cheerful salute, he walks off with my trunk. I watch him lift the trunk into the car behind the engine and exhale.
I think back to my dime novels: Was Texas Jack ever scared to board a train? He’d scorn the thought.
Squaring my shoulders, I climb the metal stairs into a second-class car.
chapter six
Tuesday, July 9, 1878
Salt Lake City, Utah
Twenty days until eclipse
Though several windows are open in the train car, the air inside is, if possible, even warmer than the outside air. The sun has just set, but enough light remains to illuminate the cabin with a gray glow. The seats are arranged in rows, some facing forward, some back. Most of the rows are occupied by at least one person, most of them men. An older black woman sits by herself in a row facing north, her curling gray hair drawn back in a neat bun.
I hesitate. I promised Mama I wouldn’t sit by any strange men, but the only other empty seat is by the woman, and I’ve never spoken to a black person in my life. There aren’t any in Monroe. As though she feels my eyes upon her, the woman looks up at me. Her glance shifts away quickly, but her eyes are kind.
Someone outside blows a whistle, and the train lurches forward. Unprepared, I stumble, grabbing a nearby seat for balance.
I make my way toward the woman. “May I sit here?”
“Suit yourself,” she says, but she smiles, so I do.
As the train leaves the station, the gas-lit streets of Salt Lake City pass by slowly, as though from a wagon, and then pick up speed as the train does, swirling past until the muted colors blur together. The jerkiness that nearly knocked me down eases with the increased speed.
I study my seatmate from the corner of my eyes. Her skin is a lovely smooth brown, deep and rich, so different from my pale, freckled flesh. I’m not sure what train etiquette is. Should I speak to her? Are white folks supposed to speak to black folks? Surely it can’t hurt to be polite.
I turn to her. “Thanks for letting me join you. I’m Elizabeth Bertelsen.”
“Evening, Miss Bertelsen,” she says. “Jane James. Where you heading?”
“To Ogden, and then east to Cheyenne. And you?”
“Just to Ogden, visiting some friends. You from around here?”
I shake my head. “I was born in Salt Lake City, but I don’t remember much of it. My parents moved to Sevier County when I was still little.”
“Salt Lake’s a fine place,” she says. “It’s been my home for over thirty years.”
I do some rapid calculation: she must have arrived with the first wave of Mormon pioneers in 1847. I look at her in some surprise. “You’re a Mormon?”
She chuckles a little. “Have been since before your mama was born, most like. Almost forty years now. I traveled from Connecticut to Nauvoo, Illinois, walked most of the way, even lived with the prophet Joseph.”
A hot wash of shame makes my cheeks burn. Why did I assume—? Did I think all Mormons should look like me, like my family?
If Sister James notices me blushing, she kindly ignores it. Turning the conversation away from my gaffe, I ask, “What was the prophet Joseph like?”
Her eyes take on a f
araway look. “He took me and my family in when we showed up with nothing, our shoes worn out from walking so far across frozen ground. Gave me a job. He wasn’t a perfect man, but he was the finest man I ever saw.”
“Did your family come with you to Utah?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Only my husband and oldest son, Sylvester. Another son was born on the trail. But my mama and sisters and brothers stayed behind.”
I want to ask Sister James why she came west when her family stayed behind, but Mama would say such questions are none of my business.
Maybe Sister James sees the question in my face, or maybe her reminiscences carry her, because she says, “I came anyway, because I wanted to be with the Saints. It hasn’t always been easy. Sometimes I miss my mama, though she’s gone now. And the Saints are only human, no better nor worse than most folks. But what they say and think of me doesn’t matter so much as what God thinks, and I’m right where God wants me to be.”
I shift in my seat, trying to find a better position on the uneven cushion of my chair. It doesn’t sit right with me, the idea that maybe Sister James hasn’t always been treated well by other Saints. I wonder if it’s because of her color, or something else.
But mostly, I envy her certainty. “How do you know? Where God wants you to be?”
She looks at me sharply. “I can’t tell you where God wants you. It’s not my job, and you wouldn’t want my advice anyway. You’ve got to figure that out yourself. One thing I am sure of: God wants you. He wants all of us, in our own ways.”
A man in uniform stops by our seat, breaking off our conversation. I’m relieved. I don’t want to think about which version of me God wants: the dutiful daughter who cares for her family, or the unruly girl who wants to study the stars. I’m afraid I already know.
The conductor inspects my ticket closely, checking the stamp on the back, and runs it through a tiny punch that leaves a crescent-shaped hole. He tears off part of the ticket, then returns it to me. He does the same for Sister James.
After he leaves, Sister James turns to the window, watching the darkened landscape flash past. She begins to hum, a low, warm rumble. After a minute, I catch the tune. It’s a familiar hymn, and I begin to hum along with her.
Gird up your loins, fresh courage take
Our God will never us forsake.
We don’t speak again until lights start appearing, like tiny earthbound stars. But the silence, like the car we ride in, feels warm. I sit up, tightening my grip on my carpetbag. The train pulls into the station with a screaming cry, and I resist the urge to clap my hands over my ears.
Everyone around me stands, making their way toward the door at the rear of the car. I do the same thing, with Sister James following close behind. I step carefully down the metal steps onto the wooden platform.
I drift behind others as they walk to the front of the train, where the porters, many of them black like Sister James, are handing down trunks. I spy mine and drag it toward the wooden frame building of the station.
All around me people are hugging on the platform, exchanging greetings and then going off with friends and family for the evening. I spy Sister James embracing a tall black woman somewhat younger than her. I stand for a moment, letting the wash of bodies ebb and flow around me, trying to get my bearings in this new space.
I’ve never been in Ogden before. How strange, to climb into a metal car and emerge in a new world. At least the nearly full moon overhead is familiar.
Samuel and Vilate Ann feel very far away in Salt Lake—Monroe farther away still. Everyone at home will likely be asleep by now, unless Albert has woken for a night feeding, or Rachel is restless.
A fierce, unexpected surge of homesickness sweeps over me, and I swallow. Squaring my shoulders, I walk into the small box of the station and see the ticket booth in one corner, shuttered for the night. A second pang hits me, this one of smoke-dark dread.
I assumed, somehow, that when I arrived in Ogden there would be another train waiting to take me east to Wyoming. But if the ticket counter is dark, there can be no trains for hours yet.
For a moment, everything swims around me, and I bang my shins against my trunk as I stumble. What am I to do? On the platform, I spy a few individuals tucked up on their trunks, blankets tight about them, prepared to sleep the night through beside the station.
I have slept beneath the stars before, on fine summer nights—but that was always with family sleeping beside me. I think of sharing this open space with strangers—with strange men—and something cold twists inside me. But what is the alternative? I know no one in Ogden, and though I might find a hotel near the station, I do not have the money for it.
The sense of possibility that filled me when Far mentioned traveling to Wyoming has utterly vanished. How could I think I might handle college away from home, if an empty train station undoes me?
I grip the handle of my carpetbag with both hands and stare fixedly at my fingers, blinking hard so I will not cry.
“You all right, miss?”
I look up to find a porter beside me, brown skin a few shades lighter than Sister James’s.
“Yes, I’m fine,” I say. “Only I thought I could purchase a ticket for the train to Cheyenne.”
“Next train doesn’t leave till morning,” he says, nodding at a time board on the wall. It reads: omaha, 8 a.m. Next to it, in smaller print, are some of the intermediary stops: laramie, cheyenne, kearney.
Eight a.m. Nearly nine hours away. I suppose I can sit up all night. I’ve done it before, when one of the children was sick. But the thought of those long hours stretching out in this unfamiliar station is almost more than I can bear. “Thank you,” I choke.
The porter tips his cap. “My pleasure.” He strides off across the platform, to more important (and likely paying) business.
The strains of the hymn Sister James was humming come back to me: Fresh courage take.
Mama left England alone, without any of her family, to sail on a strange ship to a strange new place because she believed it was right. Samuel’s family crossed the plains with only handcarts to carry their goods, often sleeping on frosty ground, or in snow. Sister James walked to Nauvoo from Connecticut in worn-out shoes. I could weather an evening alone on a warm summer night.
I pull my luggage up to the wall of the station, stow the few items in my carpetbag in my trunk, and then curl atop it, rolling up the carpetbag under my head for a pillow. The night is full of sound: insects, the gentle and not-so-gentle snores of my fellow passengers, the rattle of carriages on the street beyond the station, a faraway owl. The stars waltz across the sky in orchestrated figures.
* * *
* * *
When morning comes, reaching gray fingers across the sky, I sit up and stretch. I don’t feel as if I’ve slept at all, but I must have. Relief swirls through me, making my limbs weak: I made it through the night.
I swig some water from my canteen as I repack my carpetbag, and then splash some on my face. My mouth feels stuffed with cotton, and I have an urgent need for a bathroom. I find an outhouse not far from the station, then purchase some fruit from a stall for breakfast. Last of all, I buy the ticket for the train that will carry me to Cheyenne.
The train arrives only a few minutes late, and before long, we’re speeding across the valley, toward the Wasatch mountains towering along the eastern rim. We plunge into the canyon, rocky ridges rising up around us, stone monoliths punctuating the landscape. The canyon levels out to brief flatness, and then the rocks close in. While we cross through a tunnel, the light vanishes, reappearing once we’re out again.
Everything is new, and I cannot look away.
A water boy comes through the cabin, and I refill my canteen. Eventually I rise to walk about the car. I want to explore further, to see the finery of the first-class carriages that I only glimpsed before boardin
g, but when I open the door at the rear of the car, I see the wheels rushing across the rails beneath me, and there is a painted sign asking passengers not to stand on the small platform. To cross to another car, as the water boy and conductor do, I’d have to brave a two-foot gap—impossible with my long skirts. I take a deep breath and return to my seat.
There are all sorts of people in my car, as though the railroad is a little slice of America: White farmers in plain homespun clothes like me. Some white men in suits far nicer than any I’ve seen before, with silk cravats and embroidered waistcoats. An Indian couple, colorful woven blankets about their shoulders. A handful of black men, who, from their conversation, are tired of the gold mines in California and determined to try the silver mines in Colorado. I picture our paths as bright lines on a map, drawn from all over, converging briefly on the train, then diverging again once we reach our destinations.
It is just past one in the afternoon when we pull into Evanston, our first stop in Wyoming. The preceding stops, some nine of them, were all brief: only long enough for a few passengers to disembark and others to board. We are to have a half-hour’s break here to eat, and I join the crowds waiting to leave the train.
Near the station is the Mountain Trout Hotel, which, true to its name, serves up fried mountain trout. The rich smell fills the air as soon as we enter the dining room, and my mouth waters. I have a few remaining dollars in my purse, but I cannot squander them all now. Instead, I order a biscuit and some tea and am seated at a table with a few other ladies. Many of the waiters bustling through the crowded room are Chinese. I wonder how they came to be here, if they like it so far from home. Or maybe Wyoming is home now.
My tea has scarcely begun to cool when I see people already rushing back toward the train. I gulp down the rest of it, though it scalds my tongue and throat and makes my eyes water. My second-class ticket does not give me stopover privileges. If I miss this train, I shall have to purchase an entirely new ticket, and I haven’t the money for that.