Through Cloud and Sunshine

by Dean Hughes

  Liz soon realized that Joseph was well aware that many people of other faiths were part of the congregation. He had to shout to be heard by so many people, but his tone was pleasant. He explained that he had not committed treason in Missouri, as he was accused of. He had never ordered his people to resist Missouri law. He also denied that he had had anything to do with the assassination attempt on former Governor Boggs. He was certainly aware of what people were saying about his leading a great army in Nauvoo and serving as a religious leader at the same time. He told the crowd that the Illinois law required men to enroll in a militia. Many men in Nauvoo carried licenses to preach, but the state had not been willing to excuse them from military duty, so that meant thousands of men were required to serve.

  When the meeting ended, Will and Liz walked up the hill. Will told Liz, “I’d like to tell Joseph what a fine speech that was,” but as they neared the stand, it was obvious that far too many others wanted to shake the Prophet’s hand and congratulate him. Will and Liz were about to walk on by when Emma Smith, who had been sitting near the stand, greeted them. Lucy Smith, Joseph’s mother, was with Emma. Will and Liz shook hands with both. Liz had met Mother Smith before, but she doubted that Lucy would remember that. “I’m Elizabeth Lewis,” she said.

  “I know that,” Mother Smith said. “When I looked into your beautiful eyes the first time, I knew I’d never forget you.”

  “Oh, thank you,” Liz said, but she truly was surprised. Mother Smith was close to seventy, Liz knew, but her lively eyes—and her voice—made her seem younger. She was a little woman, and her hands were twisted with arthritis, but each time Liz had been around her, she had realized where Joseph’s powerful personality had come from. Mother Smith spoke her mind freely, and she carried an authority that contradicted her age. Today she was wearing a black dress and an old-fashioned white cap with strings around her chin—all of which seemed far too hot in this weather—but she showed no signs of wilting in the heat.

  “I was hoping to see you today,” Emma said to Liz. “I want to invite you and Brother Lewis to go with us on board the Maid of Iowa—our new riverboat—and enjoy a short excursion. Afterwards, a traveling group, reported to be very accomplished, will perform a play in the upper room of the brick store.”

  “Oh ... that would be very nice,” Liz said, but she could hardly believe she had heard correctly. Why would she and Will be included?

  “It will take place on the evening of July 15, a week from Saturday. We won’t make a long trip of it, but there will be a band on the boat, and there will be some dancing—and certainly, a little something to eat.”

  “More than a little something,” Lucy said. “I have no doubt of that.”

  Liz glanced at Will. He was nodding. “Aye. I’m certain we can attend,” he was saying, and Liz could see how pleased he was.

  “Good, then. We’ll plan on you.” And then she added, as though by explanation. “There are so many of us in Nauvoo. It’s not easy to include everyone. But Joseph thinks very highly of both of you—and I’ve had such a good impression myself. We want to become better acquainted.”

  Liz was nodding. “Thank you. That means a great deal to us. I’m certain it will be a happy occasion.”

  “And how is your little adopted son doing?” Emma asked. “Tell me his name again.”

  “Jacob.”

  Jacob was perched on his father’s arm. He turned his head shyly when Emma patted him on the knee. But Emma raised her voice a little and called, “Children, come and say hello to the Lewises—and to little Jacob.”

  Emma’s children were playing nearby. Little Alexander, who seemed to be about five, was chasing after his sister, Julia, and his two brothers, Joseph and Frederick. The children dodged and ran about as he tried to tag them.

  The children didn’t stop their game immediately, and Emma became more demanding. “That’s enough, children. You’re perspiring like little heathens. Come here now.”

  Julia was the first to approach. Liz thought she must be eleven or twelve. Emma introduced all the children, then said to Julia, “This is Jacob. He’s the little boy I told you about—the one who lost his mother.”

  Liz thought she understood. Emma wanted Julia to see how much Jacob was loved—just as she had been when Emma had taken her in after her own mother had died in childbirth. Julia immediately reached for Jacob, who surprisingly went to her, and he laughed when she spoke to him in an animated voice. “Well, aren’t you a fine big boy,” Julia told him. “May I be your auntie?”

  Liz found the scene touching—these two motherless children so happy with one another.

  Liz could see that the boys were less than entertained by this pause in their game. She thought it better if she didn’t keep them long. “Thank you so much, Sister Emma,” she said. “We’ll look forward to the excursion on the fifteenth.”

  Will took Jacob back, and he and Liz wished the Smith family a good day and walked on toward the temple. As soon as they were distant enough, Liz asked Will, “Did she really ask us to go on the riverboat with them—and to dance and see a play?”

  “She did, and I’m still trying to imagine that such a thing could happen. It must be because she likes you so much.”

  “Joseph keeps saying how highly he thinks of you.”

  Will laughed and shook his head as if to say, That couldn’t be the reason.

  But Liz was still trying to accept what had happened. A picture came into her mind: her only Sunday dress so old and worn now. She decided she would have to do something with it to make it look a little fancier, but she wouldn’t say anything to Will about it.

  Will must have been thinking the same thing. “If I buy some material for you, could you sew your own dress—now that you’re becoming such a seamstress?”

  “I don’t need a new dress, Will. I can wear—”

  “You shall have a new dress. And that’s the end of that conversation.”

  But Liz knew she could never manage to sew a fancy dress. She tried to think how she could explain that to Will. “Maybe Sister Cook can help me with it,” she finally offered.

  “I’ll buy satin for you—to match your eyes.”

  “Oh, Will, we can’t buy satin.”

  “Pale green satin, with a shine on the cloth, just like your eyes. You’ll be the most beautiful woman there.”

  Liz liked hearing that, but she also knew there was something else she needed to tell him. It was a realization that had been coming on these past few days. “Will, there’s something you might want to consider.” She stopped and turned toward him. He stopped too. “That would be a great deal of money to spend on a dress that might not fit me very long.”

  She waited for his eyes to register the obvious question. “Liz, are you ...”

  “Yes, I believe so. In fact, I’m quite sure.”

  Will shifted Jacob to his left arm and wrapped his right one around Liz. “That’s good,” he said. “That’s wonderful! And all the more reason to have a nice dress while you can still wear it.”

  “It may never fit me again.”

  “It will be worth it just to let everyone on that boat see the most beautiful woman in the world. How often do people have that chance?”

  “Will, you shouldn’t say things that are not true. The Lord might smite you for such an exaggeration.” But in fact, she liked him saying such things, and she liked when he denied her accusation and claimed to be speaking pure truth. What she couldn’t imagine was that there really was a man in the world quite so fine-looking as Will. And what was best, he had understood how much she wanted a new dress even when she had told him that she didn’t need one.

  • • •

  Will and Jesse had both planted their own fields, and they had also planted their acres at the Big Field, the profit from which they planned to split. They even planned to include Daniel’s new land and make th
e split three ways, even though the newly plowed field wouldn’t produce as much. Now the three were working on a road from Green Plains to Lima. A rough wagon trail had existed there for many years, but Will and Jesse had been hired to widen and level it. This road was farther from Nauvoo than Will had worked before, and he worried about finding safe places to keep his oxen at night. Their own farms were simply too far away. But Will had found a farmer, Oliver Hyatt, who was willing, for a reasonable price, to let the oxen graze with his own animals.

  Some nights the men slept on the ground near the road they were cutting rather than make the long ride back to their homes, but they only did that when they had alerted their wives that that was their plan. Liz worried that Will was working too close to Warsaw—where the greatest animosity toward the Saints had been building. Thomas Sharp, apparently in financial difficulties, had given up the Warsaw Signal, and a man named Thomas Gregg had taken over. He had renamed the newspaper the Warsaw Message, and although he was no friend of the Mormons, he didn’t express such harsh opinions as Sharp had done. But Sharp had not left town, and rumor was, he was working to organize anti-Mormon citizens to take action in driving the Saints out of the county. Levi Williams, a Baptist minister in Green Plains and leader of a local militia, had also spoken at anti-Mormon meetings and warned that the Saints were trying to take over the county and would do it if they were not driven out.

  Will understood why Liz worried. He had certainly felt the hostility of some of the people he met in the area, but he tried to be friendly. He hoped that something as simple as doing good work on the road would prove his good intentions—and represent the Saints as good people.

  One morning in July Will slipped out of bed long before the sun was up. He told Liz to rest a little longer, grabbed some cheese and a loaf of bread, saddled Socks, and headed out for Green Plains. He followed the road along the river, passed through Montebello, and reached the Hyatt farm just as the sun was rising. He had told Jesse to check on Daniel Johns, at the Big Field, and then to meet him at the Hyatt farm—or on the road south of there. Daniel had one of the teams, and he was cultivating the corn. After a wet spring, the summer had turned hot and dry. If rain came, the ground needed to be ready, and the weeds had to be cleared out. Will was worried that the cornstalks might be drying up before the grain reached full maturity.

  Will yoked three of his ox teams, walked them to the road, and then hitched them to his grader. He had already plowed the ground and broken up the sod along the sides of the old trail. Now it was a matter of leveling the ground.

  Will had been working an hour or so when a lone horseman approached from the south. As the man came near, Will greeted him, but the man said something Will couldn’t hear, so he called “whoa” to his oxen. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said. “I didn’t hear you.”

  The man laughed as he reined his horse to a stop. “Well, now, don’t you have fancy ways,” he said. “Where’d you come here from?”

  “England. Maybe you’ve heard of Gloucester. I grew up not too far from there.” Will knew very well that the man had never heard of any English city other than London, but he wanted to sound friendly. He even hoped they could converse a little, so he could show that he was no threat to anyone.

  “Gave up yer queen, did yuh? And come here to kiss the hand of ol’ Joe Smith?”

  He was a grimy-looking fellow with a dirty shirt and no coat, and he wore a long, dark beard that fanned out over his chest. He sounded like some of the backwoods people Will had met in the South. Will decided that he needed to be careful—and not respond to the man’s hostility. He took off his hat and wiped his face with the bandanna he kept around his neck. “I am a Mormon, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Is someone payin’ you to make this road?”

  “Yes, sir. Hancock County is.”

  “An’ who decided you was the one to get the work?”

  “I was asked to bid on it, sir, but as it turned out, no one else made an offer.”

  “No one tol’ me. I’d like to have this work—and I kin do it, too. Why do they think they have to give it to the Mormons?”

  “They didn’t give it to the Mormons. They gave it to me. I have oxen. I’ve done similar work in England, grading beds for railroad tracks, and I offered a bid.”

  “It’s the way thin’s is now. You people come in here and take everythin’ for yoursel’s. An’ we know what you got planned. You want to build up a place for Mormons and drive ever’one else away.”

  Will looked at the ground, the dark earth. There was so much of it, so many open fields, not yet plowed. Any Englishman would have longed for so much land and would have thought there was space for a multitude. “Tell me your name, sir.”

  “Why do you need to know that?”

  “I don’t need to know it. My name is Will Lewis, and I crossed the ocean to come here last year. As far as I’m concerned, I’m your neighbor, and I would like to be a good one. Shake my hand, and let’s be neighbors and friends.” He stepped toward the man, held out his hand, and asked again, “What’s your name, sir?”

  “Samples,” the man said. “George Samples.” And he did shake Will’s hand, but with clear reluctance, as though caught off guard and not sure what to do.

  “Glad to meet you, Mr. Samples. If I were you, I’d put in a bid the next time the county announces one of these jobs. If you’re in Carthage, drop by the county office and ask them whether other roads are being opened for bid. I suspect there might be plenty of work for both of us these next few years. The governor has set aside money to improve the roads all through the state.”

  Samples didn’t respond. The truth was, Will suspected that he didn’t know the first thing about grading a road and probably had no more than a single team of oxen.

  “That’s all fine and fancy, the way you say it,” Samples finally said, “but it won’t be like ’at for much longer. Ever’ Mormon votes the same, and more’n more of you is comin’ all the time. It won’t be long, you kin vote in yer people to run the county, and then who’s goin’ to get the jobs?”

  “Some of our people are being elected—no question. But we can all work together, don’t you think? That’s what we want.”

  “That’s what you say, but Joe tells yuh who to vote for, and you do what he says. That way, you put in yer own people or them what gives yuh what you want.”

  Will wiped the sweat from his forehead again. The morning had been tolerable, but the heat was building and the air was full of moisture. He knew he had to get his work done before the temperature was too high for his oxen and before the prairie flies came on thick in the afternoon. Still, he wanted to convince this man he wasn’t his enemy. “George, it is true that we’ve had some concerns that most of us in our church share, so we have given our vote to certain candidates, but I promise you, President Smith has never instructed us to vote for a certain man.”

  “You say all that and you look jist as pious as a preacher, but all us ’roun’ here, we know what’s what. Yer takin’ over. An’ if we don’t like it, you got yersel’s an army big enough to run right over the whole state. What I say is, we better run you all off before it’s too late. An’ I’ll tell yuh what. Most folks is sayin’ jist what I’m sayin’.”

  Will wasn’t sure this man could read, but whether he read the newspaper himself or not, he was taking up the attitude Thomas Sharp—and now Thomas Gregg—had been spreading. Will felt a terrible sadness about that. There was not one thing that would change this man’s mind.

  “I’ll tell yuh somethin’ else. Before all you people come, we never had no thievin’ going on ’roun’ here. But now, horses go missin’—cows, too, and even tools from sheds. You claim religion, but what you is, is a pack of wolves. You thieve for Joe, vote for him, dance to ever’ tune he plays. Yer jist not Americans. In this country, a man works hard and looks out for hisself, but he don’t band up with a bunc
h of others an’ do the biddin’ of some lyin’ crazy man.”

  “George, I’ve tried to—”

  “Don’t call me George. Don’t call me ‘neighbor.’ You cain’t pull the wool over my eyes.”

  Will took a long breath. “Mr. Samples, I believe in Jesus Christ, and I try to follow Him. I don’t want anything that’s yours. I want to farm this good land, the same as you, and I want to worship as I please and allow you to do the same. Not everyone in our Church is as good as we ought to be, but I don’t know a single man who wants to run you out of this county. I promise you that.”

  “Look, Mister, I’ve heerd all I’m goin’ to listen to. But mark my word. I’m not finished with you. When I strike back, you’ll know it’s me. Me an’ some more who think the way I do. I’d be watchin’ out from now on.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way,” Will said, and he gave up on saying anything more. He called to his oxen to push ahead, and he gripped the handles as the animals trudged forward. George rode his horse on past and up the road.

  Jesse showed up not long after that, and the two put in a good day of work, but the day became oppressively hot, and about three in the afternoon Will had to pasture his oxen. He watched them head straight to the only tree in the field, near a tall sod fence, and settle down in the shade. A cloud of prairie flies was already gathering around them.

  Will and Jesse rode their horses back to their homes. Will got home early enough to put in some time in the garden by his house, and he ate a big dinner and waited out the heat a little, but he went to bed before the sun was even down. He was back up again early in the morning, and he and Socks made the ten-mile trip back to the Hyatt farm. When he got there, he spotted Oliver Hyatt out in the field. He was kneeling down, looking at something. As Will came closer, he realized that it was one of his oxen. Oliver stood up, waited until Will got down from his horse, and then said, “I heard two shots ring out last night, and I thought someone was hunting varmints. But I came out here just now, and it’s one of your oxen, shot dead. I don’t know who would do such a thing.”