The Glovemaker

by Ann Weisgarber

  Off to the right, tracks marked the surface of the snow. Some were long and thin. A running rabbit. Other tracks were paw prints with claws. Not Sally’s. They were too small. A fox.

  Everything around me felt fragile. I had been afraid of the marshal. He had crowded my cabin. He had been so angry about the sixteen-year-old girl. Now he was dead.

  Across the creek and to the west, the light in Grace’s window drew me. I wanted to go there and not to the schoolhouse. I wanted to put my arms around Grace and feel the baby she carried. I wanted to see my nephews—Jacob, Zeb, and Hyrum—who were noisy with life. I longed for the comfort of family. I longed for Samuel.

  I crossed the bridge, slipping on the ice under the snow.

  A life had ended. I hurt for Mary Louise who didn’t know what had happened or where her husband was. Yet, as tired as I was, I felt lighter. A burden had been lifted. His suffering was over. I knew, though, that wasn’t the only reason I was relieved. His death could save us.

  Now on the other side of the bridge, I stopped. A path of deep holes broke the snow. It came from Grace’s and led toward the schoolhouse that was farther down the creek. Michael’s footprints, I thought. He was at the school with Junction’s men.

  The light in Grace’s window pulled me. It meant family and warmth. It meant the comfort of being with people who knew me and knew where I came from.

  Not yet, I told myself. I turned away from the lamplight and took the snow-broken path to the schoolhouse.

  The neighbor men’s voices were loud. I heard them just as I put my hand on the school door handle. They were arguing. I couldn’t make out their words but I knew. Trouble. It had come to Junction and they didn’t know what to do about it.

  I opened the door. The cold air I let in rushed to the front of the room. The raised voices sputtered and quit. The men, squeezed into the desks, turned around. Michael stood by his desk. They stared at me.

  The men were all there. Len Hall was with his two oldest sons, Ben and John, gangly boys of sixteen and fifteen. Carson Miller, who had gone with Nels in December to look for Samuel, was there with his father, Orson Miller. Adam Baker, Ollie Cookson, and Pete Sorenson were there. And Michael. Everyone but Samuel and Nels.

  I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. That brought the men back to their senses. They came at me with questions—“Where’s Brother Nels?” “What’s happened?” “Is the gentile talking?” “Has he said who he is?” “Said what he’s doing here?”

  Their voices floated around me. The men’s beards bobbed up and down as they talked.

  “Sister Deborah,” Michael said. Without my realizing it, he had left the front of the room and was now standing close to me. “You don’t look well.” He took my arm and steered me past the rows of desks to his schoolmaster chair. He had me sit down. The men had gotten themselves out of their desks and were standing. They came closer and circled around me. They smelled of wet wool and sweat. For a moment, I thought I might be sick.

  Len said, “Where’s Brother Nels?”

  I looked up at him. He was a long-faced man with a white scar off to the side of his nose. Sweat beaded his forehead. He kept blinking his eyes. I looked at the other men. Their nerves showed, too. Orson Miller’s hand tapped the side of his leg. Adam Baker shifted from one foot to the other. A muscle twitched under one of Pete Sorenson’s eyes. Ollie Cookson kept swallowing hard like something was stuck in his throat. Carson Miller picked at a scab on his hand. Michael’s eyes looked bigger than usual behind his spectacles.

  “Sister Deborah,” Len said. “Where’s Brother Nels?”

  “I don’t know. He left before dawn.”

  The men gave each other quick looks. I was all at once sweating. Not meaning to, I had just told them I’d stayed the night at Nels’.

  “He’s by himself?” Ollie said.

  Adam Baker sucked in some air. The men gave Ollie hard looks. Where I was last night didn’t matter. It was Ollie’s question they didn’t like. It was dangerous to know too much. Nels leaving me with a hurt man could mean only one thing. He had to get somebody to Floral Ranch.

  I said, “The stranger died.”

  Someone let out a whistle. The men drew closer around me. I felt small sitting in the chair with them looking down at me. “He started bleeding from his ear. . . .” I stopped. I didn’t know what made me say this.

  “He’s dead?” Len Hall said. “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.”

  Len said, “They’ll pin it on us.” His sons, Ben and John, edged closer to him.

  “We had nothing to do with his death,” Michael said. “Sister Deborah and Brother Nels were taking care of him. We’ll explain that.”

  “That won’t matter to them. He’s dead. A gentile here on some kind of gentile business.”

  Gentile business, I understood, meant lawman business.

  Michael said, “We’ll make them see reason.”

  Pete Sorenson said, “Reason? They don’t care a lick about that. A gentile died in a Mormon town. They’ll see to it that somebody hangs. Or goes before the firing squad.”

  “God help us,” Adam said. “Our families, our children.”

  The plea for God’s help echoed, the men repeating it, their faces etched with distress. Len Hall’s two boys were wide-eyed.

  “They’ll come after me,” Ollie Cookson said. He had two wives, the only one in Junction who did.

  “Or they’ll come after Brother Nels,” Len said. “He found him. And maybe even. . . .” He looked at me.

  My heart lurched.

  “No,” Michael said. “That won’t happen. We won’t let it.”

  That was echoed, too, the men saying no, no, none of us here should take the blame, we had nothing to do with it, we knew nothing about the gentile, wasn’t that so?

  Ollie said to me, “Brother Nels left just this morning? And the dead man was already here?”

  Sweat dampened my forehead. There were so many eyes looking at me. I understood what Ollie was thinking, what they all were thinking. Usually, the hunted men got here first. Then Nels guided them to Floral Ranch. A few days later, the deputies arrived. But this was different. It was out of order. The story Nels and I told made it look like the lawman was here before the hunted man.

  I felt myself waver. The weight of telling lies and shading the truth since Lewis Braden’s arrival bore down. It would be a relief to tell the men about him and how I let him sleep in my barn. It would feel good to tell them Nels and Braden hadn’t been able to find the cut to Floral Ranch, and that the man who died was Thomas Fletcher, a marshal. I’d like to tell them that this morning Nels was trying again to get Braden to the ranch.

  It was all there on the tip of my tongue. A burden shared by many was easier to bear than when carried by just two.

  What you don’t know, you can’t tell.

  Samuel’s words. Nels was abiding by them now. He hadn’t told me everything. He was protecting me. Like I had to do for the neighbors.

  Ollie said, “Sister Deborah. Brother Nels left this morning? Is that what you said?”

  I nodded, then found my voice. “Yes. This morning. Early.”

  Len said, “Was the gentile traveling with a party?”

  “Brother Nels found him alone on the bridge.”

  “Brother Michael told us that.” Len’s words were clipped with impatience. “But do you know if there are others somewhere?”

  My coat collar was tight. I unfastened the top buttons. Michael stood with his hand on the back of my chair. He was directly beside me so I couldn’t read his face.

  “Sister Deborah,” Len said. “Did you hear me? Are there others?”

  “I don’t know.” This was another lie. Lewis Braden told me two or three men were after him.

  “Likely there are more,” Pete Sorenson said. “They travel in packs.”

  A few of the men voiced their agreement. Pete said there was no time to waste. It had stopped snowing. The dead man’s friends
could be here any time.

  Ollie put his hand up, palm out, as if to hold back the men’s impatience. He said to me, “Is he carrying anything that shows who he is?”

  “He has a silver watch with a chain.” As if I needed to explain how I knew this, I said, “It fell out of his vest pocket.”

  The men hovered over me, waiting. I said, “There’s a photograph of a woman and two children inside the casing.”

  “Any inscriptions?” Adam said.

  I shook my head.

  Ollie said, “Is there anything else? Other than the watch.”

  There’d been a badge. A badge that Nels took and then lost. I said, “There’s nothing else on his person.”

  “Letters? Papers of any kind?”

  “No.”

  Ollie said, “You’re saying there’s nothing on him that tells who he is? Nothing that shows his reason for being here?”

  “There’s only the watch.”

  “With no markings,” Len Hall said.

  “A loner,” Orson Miller said.

  Ollie looked at each of the men. I went cold. They were deciding what to do with the marshal’s body.

  They could make Thomas Fletcher disappear. They’d do that for the sake of their wives and children. I read that on their faces, how they eyed each other without saying a word. This trouble came to us uninvited but that wouldn’t spare us. Lawmen wouldn’t want to believe the marshal’s death was an accident. They’d been trying to catch us helping men with plural wives. Now a lawman was dead. They’d come after us with the full might of the federal government.

  Beside me, Michael clasped his hands as if in prayer.

  They could take the marshal’s body into the canyons where it would never be found. They’d take his horse with them and see to it that it disappeared also. The deputies wouldn’t be able to prove the marshal was ever here. He could have gotten lost in the Wastelands. He must have fallen into a deep ravine.

  It would be like none of this had happened.

  His family would never know what became of him. They wouldn’t know that someone was with him when he died. They wouldn’t know that he died in a bed. Their wait for his return would be endless.

  “He has a family,” I said.

  Ollie ducked his head but not before I saw the misery in his eyes. I looked at each of the men. No one could meet my eyes.

  “Sister Deborah,” Len said. His voice was soft. “We have families too.”

  And you don’t, I imagined him thinking about me. Not the same way that Len did. Not like all of them did.

  I stood and turned to Michael beside me. He was pale and through his spectacles, his eyes were dark with anguish.

  He was a good man. They all were. But we came from people who had been driven from New York to Ohio to Missouri to Illinois and finally to Utah Territory. Our Prophet and his brother were murdered by a mob. Saints in Tennessee were burned out of their homes. Some were killed. The governor of Missouri issued an extermination order against us. We knew what could happen.

  God was testing us. We could make the marshal disappear. But God would know. We all would. The burden of carrying that secret would ruin us.

  I’d bargained with God. I’d cleaned the marshal, tried to ease his suffering, and promised I would do my best to return the watch to his wife. I thought that would be all. It wasn’t.

  I said, “We have to be better than them. We have to be able to live with ourselves.”

  The men were quiet. I said, “I want him kept in my barn.” I didn’t know where these words came from but as soon as I said them, I believed them to be true. “When his people come looking for him, they can decide what to do. If they want to take him home, they can. If they want him buried here, we’ll do that when the ground thaws. Either way, I want them to know that a woman took care of him. If they accuse us of killing him, I’ll say that might be so. I’ll tell them I didn’t know what to do for him, I couldn’t make him better. I stayed with him, though, and did what I could. He wasn’t alone when he breathed his last.”

  Ollie said, “They’ll say we killed him.”

  “But we didn’t, did we?”

  “It’s not that simple. They don’t listen to reason. The man’s dead. What happens now doesn’t matter to him.”

  “It matters to his family,” I said. “It matters to God.”

  No one could look at me.

  I said, “Who will help me carry him to my barn?”

  Their gazes skipped from one man to the next. My children, I imagined each one thinking. What will happen to them if their father is accused of murder?

  I looked at the boys, Ben and John. They were stirred up. Their eyes were bright with excitement. This was bigger than farm chores and school lessons. They were part of something dangerous. They were watching their father and the other men make decisions that could change the course of their lives.

  The boys were sixteen and fifteen. That was close to the ages Samuel and Nels had been when they saw the gap between what was preached and what was practiced. Like Samuel and Nels, I grew up in the shadow of Mountain Meadows. I’d clamped my hands over my ears to keep out the whispers. I told myself that Saints wouldn’t leave gentiles to rot where they’d been killed. My father would not allow such a thing. Neither would the other elders in Parowan. But they had.

  Now, thirty years later, a gentile who meant us harm was dead on our soil. Ben and John were witnesses to what we would do about that.

  I said, “Ye shall remember your children. How ye grieved their hearts because of the example ye have set before them.”

  Len looked at his sons. As if directed to do so, all the men looked at the boys. Ben and John were long-limbed like their father. Their Adam’s apples slid up and down their throats. Ben, the older one, looked to be trying to grow a beard. John’s nose and cheeks were flecked with freckles. As the men studied them, John flushed and looked down at the floor. Ben, his eyebrows pulled together, looked at his father.

  The fear that gripped the room shifted to shame.

  Ollie said, “We’ll store him in Brother Nels’ barn.”

  Where he might disappear, I thought. He could disappear from my barn but I had to be able to tell myself I’d done my best to stop that. Caring for the marshal was mine to see through until the end. That was part of my bargain for Samuel’s return home.

  I said, “Brother Nels has shouldered enough. I want the man in my barn. I took care of him, and I need to do this last thing.”

  Pete Sorenson shook his head. He didn’t understand my reasoning but that didn’t matter. I said, “He’s going to my barn even if I have to carry him myself.”

  “No, Sister Deborah,” Michael said. “There’s no need for that.” He paused just long enough to bow his head as if in prayer. Then, looking at me, he said, “I’ll help you.”

  Someone cleared his throat. A floorboard squeaked. Carson Miller stepped forward. “I’ll help.”

  “And me,” Adam said.

  Orson said, “There’s need for a coffin. I’ve got spare lumber.”

  One by one, the others—Len, Pete, and Ollie—agreed to help. The boys, Ben and John, did too. God was watching. So were Junction’s children.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  DEBORAH – THE UNSPOKEN

  January 13, 1888

  Two o’clock in the afternoon. My parlor clock ticked the seconds. I waited for Nels’ return from Floral Ranch. I waited for the lawmen. I waited for Samuel.

  The marshal’s body was in my barn. He was wrapped in blankets to keep out varmints. Ben and John Hall brought four sawhorses from Nels’ barn and the men laid the marshal on top of them. That had to do while Orson Miller made the coffin.

  The clock’s second hand jerked each time it moved. I waited in the kitchen for Nels. I waited by the parlor window looking for lawmen. Sally watched me from where she lay on her side under the table. I’d brought her home with me when the men carried the marshal’s body to my barn. I didn’t want to be alone.


  Three o’clock. I stared at the calendar, then the map that showed Samuel’s route home. He could get here before the lawmen came.

  I carried in more wood and stoked the cookstove fire. I tried not to think about how the marshal had suffered. Instead, my thoughts dwelled on how it would be when Nels got to his cabin and found the marshal and me gone. He wouldn’t know what to make of that. Surely he’d come here to look for me.

  I waited by the kitchen window, then the parlor window. The sun never broke through. It snowed but it was half-hearted, stopping and starting. I thought about what Michael might have told Grace about the gentile who died at Nels’. I thought about what he might not want her to know and how his story probably had holes. All our stories did.

  Weariness pulled my arms and legs. I sat down at the kitchen table. I let sleep take me and then I jerked awake sure that I heard men’s voices.

  Four o’clock. I put lit lanterns in the two windows. I held Samuel’s black-and-white rock in the palm of my hand. I got the record book I kept for my glovemaking. I touched the scraps of leather and the thread I’d pasted on each page. I read the measurements for Samuel’s hands, then for my mother’s and my father’s. Grace and Michael’s hands were here. I touched the leather I used for my brothers and my sister Sarah, and for their families. My fingers skimmed over the deerskin I’d used for Nels’ gloves. I thought of that Christmas when the three of us were together.

  Five o’clock. I made myself eat. The venison and slices of bread were like grit in my mouth. Sally gulped down the venison I gave her. I filled the dish basin with hot water and scrubbed my dishes. Dusk deepened. Something had happened to Nels. He wasn’t back from Floral Ranch. Or maybe he came across a neighbor who told him what happened to the marshal. Maybe Nels knew I was home and felt there wasn’t a reason to come here.

  The dinner dishes washed, I carried a lantern and warm water to the chicken coop. Sally came with me and I was glad for her company. She’d hear Nels or the deputies long before I did. At the coop, I changed the water and let down the flaps on the sides to keep out the cold. In the barn, I milked Buttercup and allowed my forehead to rest against her warm flank. Using the toboggan, I carried the milk home. I strained to hear horses or men’s voices. Nothing.