The Glovemaker

by Ann Weisgarber

  The last letter was dated November 3, 1887. Two months and twelve days ago. I skimmed over the beginning and read the end.

  I am lonesome for You. But not for long. Look for Me by December 1. You will know Me by the Grin on my Face.

  Every part of me ached; I couldn’t read more. I needed air. I got up and opened the door. The cold swept in, scattering the papers and sending them swirling. I slammed the door closed and chased the letters and envelopes that drifted along the floor. I scooped each one up, not wanting anything to happen to them.

  One of the pages had torn at a top corner. I held it near the lamplight. It was the last letter, the one that had pierced my heart and caused me to need air.

  This Outpost is so fresh new the Familys have not come up with a Name for it. It is 5 miles South of Mt. Carmel.

  I read these sentences again. Something didn’t fit right.

  Samuel had written in his second letter, the one dated October fifteenth, that he was going to Mt. Carmel. It will not take long to get there. Yet in the third letter, written on November third, he was five miles south. For some reason, it had taken longer than he’d expected.

  Samuel traveled to Mt. Carmel every fall. He knew the wagon trails and was a good judge of distance. Maybe he meant to write that the new outpost was five miles north of the town.

  That didn’t feel right. It wasn’t like him to make that kind of mistake. I searched Nels’ map. Mt. Carmel wasn’t on it.

  Maybe Samuel had already been there. Maybe he backtracked south to the place that didn’t have a name. The families there needed three wheels fixed. There might have been more families in other out-of-the-way places in desperate need of wheels. Samuel was tender-hearted. Once he heard someone needed help, he’d find it hard to refuse them.

  Maybe it wasn’t just the rockslide that slowed him. Maybe Samuel took on more work than usual. Maybe he got a late start getting home.

  Yes, I thought. First a late start, then the trail blocked by the slide. This explained why he wasn’t home yet.

  Holding the letter, I walked from the kitchen to the parlor to the bedroom and back to the kitchen. It would worry Samuel that I didn’t know he was delayed. The November third letter said he would be home by the first of December. He might have written a fourth letter, one that hadn’t arrived, to let me know he’d be home later than expected. Then he came across the rockslide and was forced to come through the mountains, slowing him all the more.

  That was what happened. It was too soon to expect Samuel.

  Too soon. The words turned me lightheaded. My hands shook. I circled around the table, then went to the parlor window that faced the Wastelands. There was nothing to see but the dark.

  Too soon. It could be a few more weeks.

  I picked up the calendar from the table. It took two tries to get it on the wall nail.

  Samuel was all right. The last letter made it so. If he turned back for one family, he had done it again. I was sure of it.

  I ran my palms along the sides of my skirt. My hands still jittered but I managed to fold the letters and put them back in the envelopes. Two of the envelopes were worn with dark smears. Dirt, I thought. I laughed. That was so like Samuel. He was a man who admired rocks. He was a man who saw things in the soil that no one else did.

  In the bedroom, I put the letters under one of Samuel’s rocks on the dresser. From there, I hurried to the front door and got my coat. Then I was out the door and plunging through the snow.

  Too soon. Too soon. The words bubbled in my mind. I had to tell Nels.

  In my hurry, I’d forgotten a lantern. It didn’t matter, I knew the way. Holding my skirt up out of the snow, I stumbled my way toward the creek. The center, the part not frozen, rushed and glinted in the starlight.

  Close to the bank, I turned east. The icy snow crackled as I broke through it. Because of Braden, the marshal came to Junction. Because the marshal died, his family had to take him home. Because they needed help getting through the Wastelands, Carson Miller went with them. If those things had not happened, it could have been weeks before anyone found Samuel’s letters at the mail tree.

  Those would have been weeks of more worry, weeks that would tear at me.

  I passed Grace’s cabin. It was dark, they were asleep. I’d tell them about Samuel’s delay first thing in the morning. I hurried, the chant—too soon—driving me on toward the bridge. Nels would be so relieved. I could picture his smile as if he were with me now.

  Midway across the bridge, I slipped, then caught myself. Out of breath, I held on to the rail and gathered myself.

  Up ahead, Nels’ cabin was dark. He might be asleep.

  The thought drew me up hard. I shouldn’t go there. Not at this time of night. Even with good news, the kind that would lift our spirits and make us lighthearted, I couldn’t. I’d seen how he felt about me.

  I leaned against the bridge rail, my disappointment sharp. I wanted to tell Nels the good news; I wanted to relieve his mind. Yet it was late. He was sleeping. I thought how it would seem if I woke him, the two of us alone. I had to keep my distance.

  Carson Miller, I recalled, had said something about intending to go by Nels’ place after he left me. My thoughts had been too scattered about the letters to pay him much mind. Now it came back to me. He said he would let Nels know he had gotten the marshal’s family through the Wastelands. Carson, I felt sure, would also tell him about the letters. That had to be enough for now. Nels would hear the news about Samuel’s delay in the morning.

  All at once spent, I turned around. Holding on to the rail, I went back to my side of the creek. Dawn wasn’t more than a handful of hours away. At first light, I’d go to Grace’s and ask Michael to tell the neighbors. And Nels.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  NELS – THE LEAVE-TAKING

  January 16–February 8, 1888

  Deborah’s letters from Samuel were a mighty easement. What she said about Samuel stopping at out-of-the-way places fit with what I thought had happened. Even Carson Miller said it could be so.

  It was Michael who told me what was in the letters. He hadn’t read them. They were Deborah’s but from what she reported to him, it could be close to February before Samuel got home.

  After telling me, Michael went to the Miller place to let them know that Samuel had been delayed. From there, it didn’t take long before everyone in Junction knew.

  The good news made me smile from ear to ear. The good news made me want to see Deborah. I wanted to see the worry gone from her features. I wanted to tell her I regretted saying Samuel should have been home by the second week in January. I wanted her to know I was sorry for adding to her worry.

  But Deborah had sent Michael to tell me about the letters. The silent warning she gave me on the bridge still stood. She wanted me to stay away from her. I had been careless, she’d seen how I felt about her. If I could change that, I would.

  Samuel’s letters didn’t change anything about Utah’s Marshal Dyer or his deputies. I was sure that once Dyer got word about Marshal Fletcher’s death, he would come after us. He was bound to want someone to pay. Nobody in Junction put this in words but I believed everyone was thinking it. During the first week after the marshal’s relations left with the body, some of us patched Pete Sorenson’s barn roof. It had given way in three places from the weight of the snow. While we cut boards to size and nailed them to the roof’s beams, Orson Miller kept looking off toward the Wastelands, the direction the deputies would come from. Ollie Cookson was so jumpy he kept dropping nails. Pete Sorenson had acquired a twitchy muscle under his right eye. Adam Baker seemed to lean in the direction of his homestead like he expected trouble to first show its face there.

  The days passed. Pete Sorenson’s barn roof was fixed. Nights, I didn’t sleep. Instead, I walked the orchards with Sally, cold as it was. I waited for Dyer’s deputies. I waited for Samuel.

  Carson’s claim about seeing a wheel in the ravine stuck in my mind. He was so sure. If he was rig
ht, that wheel belonged to somebody. Thinking that made me want to go and have another look.

  I decided against it. I had to be here when the deputies came with their hard questions. They’d start with Deborah. She’d been with the marshal when he died. His death happened in my cabin. They’d have questions for me. It would go against me if I weren’t here when the deputies showed up.

  January twenty-ninth. Sunday. It was two weeks to the day that the marshal’s relations left. There were still no signs of lawmen. Or of Samuel.

  It wasn’t like me but I felt the urge to attend church services at the schoolhouse. It was a way to make sure Deborah was all right. Good news could carry a person only so far. The wait for both Samuel and the deputies had to be wearing on her. It was wearing on me. Even if she wasn’t at church services, I could find a way to inquire about her. I hadn’t seen Deborah since she’d come to the bridge to warn me off. From that time on, she stayed on her side of the creek. I stayed on mine.

  Deborah was at services. She sat in a desk close to the front. It was where the other women and younger children were. Her sister Grace sat at the desk to Deborah’s right. Not having enough desks, I stood in the back with some of the other men. Boys mostly over the age of ten stood along the walls. Prayers were said for Samuel’s safe passage home. Grace held Deborah’s hand. Some of the men said prayers asking God to look after us during turbulent and uncertain times. Readings from the Bible referred to the righteous. I took that to mean us. A passage from the Book of Mormon reminded us to keep the commandments so God would strengthen us and provide means for us while we sojourn in the wilderness.

  When the last hymn was sung, Ollie Cookson called out and asked everyone to stay. He left the back of the room and went to the front. “Brothers and sisters,” he said. “There’s something that wants saying.” He swallowed hard, then ran his hand over his dark beard. His gaze darted to his two wives and to his children. There were eight of them.

  “Spit it out,” Pete Sorenson said.

  Some of the children laughed. Their mothers glared at them. Ollie said, “It’s a hard notion, the orchards coming along like they are and all. But we’re leaving Junction. Tomorrow.”

  That set off a wave of questions. “Where will you go?” “What will you do?” No one asked why. We knew. Ollie Cookson had two wives and didn’t want to come to the attention of deputies.

  Adam Baker went to the front of the room. “Rebecca and I are leaving, too,” he said. “Not tomorrow but as soon as it warms up.”

  “Where will you go?” The question, clipped with panic, traveled around the room again.

  “To Nevada,” Ollie said.

  “Idaho,” Adam said.

  “It’s not safe here,” someone said and that made its way around the room. Ruth Hall’s baby let out a shrill squawk. Ruth, Cecilia Miller, and Mary Sorenson left their seats in the front and went to their husbands. Their little children, unsteady on their feet, clung to the women’s skirts. Standing by her husband, Ruth rocked from side to side to calm her baby. Her hand was quick as she patted the baby’s back. Cecilia’s face was flushed red. Mary’s eyes were wide with alarm.

  Two families leaving, I could see them thinking. Sister Rebecca won’t be here to do our doctoring. Only six families left. That’s if you count Sister Deborah and Brother Nels as two of the families. The stranger who died will bring us trouble. Lawmen will come any day. More Saints—men with plural wives—in need of our help will start coming in the spring. We have to leave.

  “Brothers and Sisters,” Michael said. He stood at the front of the room. Everyone went quiet. The crying baby settled to a whimper. “Grace and I have also made the decision to leave.” Michael’s eyes were big behind his spectacles. He said, “I’ve prayed about it. We both have. We beseeched God for guidance and He spoke to me. ‘It’s time to go home, Brother Michael,’ God told me. ‘Your work here in Junction is finished. You are needed elsewhere.’ When God sees fit to send us a long warm stretch, we’ll go.”

  That set off more talk. “The schoolmaster’s leaving.” “What will we do?” “What should we do?”

  I moved so I could see Deborah better. Her back to me, it was like she was cut from stone. Beside her on the other side of the aisle, Grace was looking at her. Deborah didn’t turn her head, she didn’t move.

  “Leaving.” The voices around me were loud in my ears. Most of us came here to have air between us and the church. We thought we’d be left alone. We were fools to believe that.

  Three families leaving. That left the Sorensons, the Millers, the Halls, Deborah, and me. Others would leave, too. I felt sure of it. Fear did that. It was a disease easily caught, especially when there were children to think of.

  A pain shot through me. Deborah might want to leave once Samuel got home.

  The women had clumped together. They talked. Their voices overlapped. Deborah was with them but at the same time, was apart from them. She stood looking at her hand and twisting her wedding band.

  I wanted to go to her and bundle her close to me.

  Not yours, a voice said in my head. Stay away.

  Deborah looked up from her wedding band. Her gaze skipped around the room and landed on me. For a moment, it was only the two of us. I read despair in her eyes. I saw her need to be comforted.

  I took a step toward her. As I did, Grace’s youngest, Hyrum, went to Deborah and took her hand. Startled, Deborah looked away from me and at Hyrum. He said something. I couldn’t hear what it was over all the commotion and chatter. Deborah bent and took both of his hands. She must have said something because Hyrum smiled. She did, too.

  She gave me a quick glance before turning her back to me. I made my way to the door. Even without Samuel, Deborah wasn’t alone. She had family. She didn’t need me.

  Outside, the crisp air caused my eyes to water as I went home.

  February sixth. Still no sign of Dyer’s men. Still no sign of Samuel.

  Since the church services, it snowed off and on but not all that much. It was cold but it’d been colder than this. I still couldn’t sleep. My mind played tricks. Once I thought I heard a posse of horses ride into Junction. Another time I was sure I saw Samuel walking across the bridge toward my place.

  Since that day at the church, I’d kept to myself. I didn’t want to hear if other families had declared themselves wanting to leave once spring broke. I didn’t want to think what Michael and Grace’s leaving was doing to Deborah. Or how it was for her as she waited for Samuel. She had shaken me off. She wanted me to stay away.

  I busied myself with repairs to the cabin and barn. I oiled my carpenter tools and sharpened knives. I worked saddle soap into my saddle and rubbed it until the leather shone. I did the same with the gloves that Deborah made for me. My hands busy, I listened, waiting for lawmen and hoping for Samuel.

  February eighth. Two months and seven days after Samuel expected he’d get home. Twenty-four days since the marshal’s relations left with the body. I sat at the kitchen table. It was evening, and the wind had picked up. My fingers itched to draw, something I hadn’t done in weeks. If my pencil wasn’t down to a nub, I’d draw a picture of the shoulder-high snowdrift that was along the north side of the barn. It arched like a great wave of water. Or maybe it was more like the pocket in the side of the cliff where I’d hidden Braden the night I couldn’t get him to Floral Ranch.

  The thought of the pocket was hardly in my head when I found myself getting my coat. The suddenness of this startled Sally who’d been sleeping under the table. I went outside. Sally followed me, yawning and stretching herself awake. I looked up at the cliffs behind my barn. The trail Braden and I took that night blended into the jagged cuts. Even in the daytime, it was hard to pick out. A man had to be on the trail to see it.

  The night sky was clear and lit up from the Milky Way and the moon that was still nearly full. Hell-bent deputies coming from Salt Lake could have gotten here by now.

  A notion sprang to me from out of nowhere. Mar
shal Thomas Fletcher had taken the law into his own hands.

  My pulse quickened. I looked up at the night sky, turning the notion over in my mind. Him working outside of the law could explain why we’d been left alone. I began to walk toward my orchards thinking it through.

  Fletcher’s daughter had run off with four men who were Latter-­day Saints. She married one of them. Fletcher had to save her from a life of perversion. He got an arrest warrant issued in Tennessee. By that time she and Braden were in another state.

  Once that happened, Braden’s arrest was out of Fletcher’s hands. He’d have to turn the search over to the marshal who had jurisdiction. That wouldn’t sit well with him. Nobody cared about his daughter like he did. Only he could handle this matter. His son and cousin were backup. Maybe he’d deputized them back in Tennessee, maybe not. Either way, Thomas Fletcher was in charge.

  Speculation. But the pieces fit. Maybe, when Henry and MacGregor got to Thurber, they hadn’t notified Dyer up in Salt Lake. Maybe they came to believe that the marshal’s daughter didn’t want to leave Utah, that she’d made her choice and there was no changing her mind. The shame of the girl joining the Saints might be something best left alone. The shame of the marshal working outside of his jurisdiction could be something his family didn’t want known. Maybe they wanted to bundle this up and put it someplace where it could be forgotten.

  People did such things. Covering up was what folks had a tendency to do when the truth didn’t make them look good. We Saints weren’t any different. We all had something we didn’t want known.

  Dyer, Utah’s marshal, might not know the particulars about Thomas Fletcher’s death. Utah deputies might not be coming for us.

  Speculation, I thought again. I was fooling myself. I had to stay on guard. It was winter. Travel was slow and hard even for men on horseback. But that wouldn’t keep them from trying. A federal marshal had died in a Latter-day Saint town. Dyer’s men would come for us.

  Unless they didn’t know.