He flipped the canvas cover to reveal the printing press, swaddled among the sacks and bundles.
“Stars in heaven!” Turner cried. “If I could count the hours I spent yanking on the handle of one of these. And typecases too. You know how to set type?”
“Not well,” Cabot said. “I tried to teach myself but it was slow going.”
Turner rubbed his chin, musing. “I learned as a boy. Tedious labor, and that’s the mildest thing I’ll say about it. But now I am grateful I learned, and I’m grateful to you for bringing this press. What do you think, my dear?” he said to Charlotte. “The Daybreak Star? Or perhaps The Defender?”
Charlotte waved her hand at him. “Tend to your work and name the newspaper later.” She left to join the other women, who had gathered around a growing pile of foodstuffs being unloaded in front of the door. She felt momentarily out of sorts as the work swirled around her, but she shook it off and tried to make herself useful.
“These men will want to eat as soon as they finish their work,” she said to the women. “Let’s see what we can do.” They went inside to set up a kitchen.
The interior was not as rough as the exterior had suggested. There were two rooms and a cast-iron stove, and someone had even smoothed down the walls a bit. Charotte looked out the back door and saw George Webb walking by.
“Mr. Webb,” she called out. “Where do you get your water?”
Webb gestured toward the hill behind them. “Good spring at the base of the bluff,” he said. “Path’ll lead you right to it. Then there’s a mud spring over yonder, closer. Plenty of water, but it’s sulfur. And of course the river is closer yet.”
Two young girls were standing near. “What’s your name?” Charlotte said to the older one.
“Lucy,” she replied. “This is Mary.”
“Lucy, I want you and Mary to find whatever pails you can, take them up that path to the spring, and fill them with water. We will need plenty of water today.”
The girls trotted off. “Mama, that lady says ‘pails,’“ Lucy said with a giggle.
Before long they were frying salt pork in skillets on the stove and saving the grease to cook hoe cakes. Lucy and Mary’s mother, a muscular, laughing woman from Maryland named Frances Wickman, proved to be the better cook, and Charlotte stepped back to give her room.
She found a broom and began to push dirt toward the front door. The task would have to be repeated later in the evening, but there was no point in standing around like a dressmaker’s dummy. Then she heard footsteps behind her and felt Turner’s hands on her shoulders. She leaned back into his chest.
“My hands are greasy,” she said.
“That’s all right.”
His arms encircled her and she felt his beard against her face. This would take some getting used to; she had preferred him clean shaven. The other women noticed his arrival but kept their heads to their work, discreet.
“You’re safely here,” he said.
“And so are you.”
“I’m sorry the cabin is not as far along as I had hoped. Everything takes twice as long as I thought.”
“It’s fine.”
“Did you see your picture? It’s on the wall behind the door back here.”
He led her to the back room, pulling the door shut, and sure enough there was her tintype in a frame, hung from a nail in the wall. And now they were alone. With the door closed, he pulled her to him and kissed her.
“Thank you for your letters,” she said after a while.
“They were the best part of my day. All day, I would compose my next letter in my mind. I couldn’t wait until evening to get back here and write.”
“They came in great bunches sometimes.”
He smiled. “That’s how they were sent sometimes. People don’t come along this road every day.”
“Any more encounters with that bandit? You could have been killed, you know.” She shivered for a moment at the thought of him dead on some riverbank, never to be found.
“No. I know. To this day I don’t know why we weren’t. Because I wrote the letter for him, perhaps. Or perhaps he already had all he could carry.” He squeezed her hands. “How are your mother and father?”
“Well enough. My father thinks I’ve gone mad.”
“For once, I may agree with him. I would have sent for you when things were more ready out here.”
“This is your great experiment,” she told him. “This is where I should be. My father will forward any letters.”
“But the hardship—”
“Living without you was a hardship. Living here will merely be a struggle.”
That evening, the men gathered in the yard of the cabin, many with their copies of Travels to Daybreak for reference.
“Let us plan,” Turner said. He drew a map in the dirt of the yard. “Here is the river, and here the road along it. There is no room for houses on the river side of the road, so—” He marked an arc in the dirt. “I propose we set our houses in a row, something like this, and smooth out a new road between them. It will return to the main road right here, where we stand.”
He gazed north across the fields into the forest. “Every family will have a house of its own. Single men will share, four to a cabin. That’s eleven cabins. As the community grows, we will add houses along the length of the road first and then build side streets.”
The group followed his gaze. To the west, the hill that hemmed in the valley rose like a dark shoulder, its shadow creeping longer with each minute. The sycamores by the river glittered silver in the fading light, and in the dimness they could almost see the houses, the streets, the city, rising from the switchgrass and stumps. They could feel the power of Turner’s dream, and as the evening light dimmed it became their own dream, a collective dream, the dream of a city in the wilderness.
“Once everyone is housed,” Turner went on, “we will build a large meeting house, a Temple of Community, for school on the weekdays and church on Sunday. And every week from this day on out, we will meet as a community to plan our course. What day of the week is it?”
“Thursday,” someone answered. “September the twenty-first.”
“Very well,” said Turner. “Every Thursday will be our meeting night. And every September twenty-first will be a community holiday, the anniversary of our founding.”
They divided into crews, with two-thirds of the men assigned to building cabins and one-third to clearing ground. None of the men were farmers; they were clerks, students, factory workers, shopkeeper’s sons. George Webb agreed to tutor the farming group in the ways of clearing, plowing, and planting.
Inside the house, Charlotte and the other women took turns scrubbing dishes in a wooden tub. They moved quietly so as to hear the conversation outside.
“Too late to plant anything,” murmured Mrs. Wickman. “We’ll have to live on our stores this winter.”
“What should we be doing first?” Charlotte said.
Mrs. Wickman gave her a sideways glance, and the other women drew near to hear her whispered reply.
“The way I see it,” she said, “There’s better than fifty men out there, and only five of us women. Those single men won’t know a blessed thing about home life. More wives will be coming soon, but for now it’ll be all we can do to keep them fed.”
“You have two girls,” said another woman. “I have one. We’ll set up a kettle by the river, and they can take over the washing.”
“Agreed.”
Charlotte spoke up. “Fetching the water will be a burden. We should get one of the men to build us a race from the spring. It’s all downhill.”
“Good,” said Mrs. Wickman. “One of the pork barrels will be empty by morning. We can place it at the corner of the house here for rainwater, and add more barrels as they empty.”
“Which one is yours?” Charlotte whispered to her as they watched the men debate.
Mrs. Wickman pointed to a lank, bespectacled man with a flat-brimmed hat. “That’s him,
” she said. “John Wesley Wickman. Clerk on the docks most of his life, but oh, he does love to read, read, read, and think, think, think. Don’t know why he ever married me!” She chuckled softly.
With the dishes finished, they filed out the back door and came around front to listen to the rest of the talk. The debate had moved to the question of membership.
“One more thing,” Turner said. “Conditions for entry. You are the pioneers here. You’ve already earned your place. But later on, not everyone will come with the same high purpose.”
“Loafers and parasites,” someone said.
“Let’s just say, enthusiasts without skills or resources,” replied Turner. “Despite our ideals, we must also act in the best interests of the colony. Therefore I propose that additional colonists not be admitted unless they come with at least two hundred dollars in money or goods.”
“Hear, hear,” called a voice.
“Admittance will be by community vote, and is provisional for six months. At six months, another vote.”
“And no Irish,” said a man in the front of the crowd.
The comment brought an angry buzz. Turner let it run a while before all faces eventually turned to him.
“Each of us comes from stock that was once new to this country,” he said. “We cannot turn a man away for that. We must decide one case at a time.”
“Besides,” said another man, “when was the last time you saw an Irishman with two hundred dollars to his name?”
The group’s laughter was interrupted by a rifle shot that cracked through the twilight. Men flinched and looked in all directions, checking for injury. There was movement from the white house down the valley.
Unnoticed by all, Harp Webb had come onto the porch, and from his porch had shot a mourning dove. It fluttered to the ground from the branches of a large white oak tree that stood beside the road a hundred yards from where the group had gathered. Harp laid his rifle on the railing and walked down the hill to fetch it.
“Some country this is. Shooting rifles off your front porch,” said a man quietly.
Charlotte watched as Harp retrieved the bird, paying them no mind. He was a thin man with a full beard; bright yellow hair strung out in long trails from beneath his hat. He walked with deliberation, and at first she thought he was going to ignore them entirely; but as he turned toward his house, he gave the group a careless wave. Charlotte took a peek at George Webb, but other than some additional reddening of his potato nose, his face gave no clue to what he was thinking.
The incident spoiled the mood of the group for a time. Everyone gathered their things and made plans for the night in quiet murmurs. But once the wives and children settled on the floor of the cabin’s front room, the incident with Harp was behind them and the room filled with talk and laughter. As night came on, Charlotte retreated to the back room. She started to unpack her trunk, but fatigue caught up with her; she took a nightdress off the top of the stack of clothing and got into bed. She hadn’t realized how tired she was. The mattress was just a straw tick sitting on a rope frame, but after the long trip it felt like feathers.
Soon Turner came in and quietly closed the door behind him. He undressed in the dark, taking his nightshirt from a hook on the door, and climbed into bed.
For a little while they just held each other.
“You surprised me,” he said at last. “But I’m glad to see you.”
“I should hope so!” She pulled him to her and kissed him. She could feel his smile beneath her lips.
He was lean, much leaner than when he had left. Her hands caressed his sides, counting every rib.
“You’ll fatten me up,” he said, reading her mind.
“I’ll do my best.”
“Can you believe it? We’re starting the community.” His voice was excited. “I would never have imagined it. But here I am. Can you believe it?”
Charlotte let him talk. For now, she was just happy to stroke his chest and hear his voice again. She had been able to hear his voice in the letters he wrote, but only with effort. Now she could just close her eyes and hear him, the happy, clear voice she knew, carrying on about work crews and incorporating the town and starting the newspaper as soon as possible, about spreading the gospel of cooperation. She let the sound flow over her.
In time, the words slowed. Her caresses moved lower, finding the tail of his nightshirt, then moved underneath. He stirred and turned toward her.
Later on, he murmured in the dark, “Why did you come? You know I said I’d send for you.”
“I couldn’t wait. I just felt I had to be here.”
“It’s going to be hard. This is hard country.”
“I’m not afraid. I want to be here.” She could hear his breathing even out. His voice had grown soft and drowsy. Then all was quiet.
“I want our child to know its father,” she said to his sleeping form.
November 1857
Chapter 7
Turner awoke to the soft noises of Charlotte, awake already, in the other room fixing breakfast. He rubbed his face, clean-shaven again. His hand felt like a stranger’s, hard and calloused. Progress at a cost—he was turning into one of those muscle-bound farmers he had disdained as a youth. Typesetting was difficult nowadays. His fingertips no longer could feel the kerf at the bottom of a type stem. Out back, in the shed they had built for the printing press, he struggled with a simple paragraph, setting p’s as d’s and b’s as q’s.
Still, he’d gotten out the first issue of The Daybreak Eagle. And the colony was taking shape. The cabin building was going well—a cabin could go up in a hurry with twenty men working on it. They had not brought glass for windows, so for now they were hanging sheets of oiled cloth in the openings. Perhaps next year they would have enough money in the treasury to equip each house with a window; none should enjoy the privilege until everyone could. All the families had cabins now, and most of the single men. They would have everyone out of tents in another couple of weeks.
New settlers kept arriving. A man named Hess Shepherson, who had left a new bride waiting in Indiana while he checked out the Daybreak experiment, rode in on horseback in October. A few days later, one of the wagoners the group had hired in Sainte Genevieve, Ben Prentice, returned with his wife and two children. “Ben just kept carrying on about how happy you people all were, talking about share and share alike,” Mrs. Prentice said, her expression dubious. “So I said all right, let’s go and see. We was just renting the old place anyway.” She smiled a little shyly. “I can’t say no to him most of the time, I might as well admit.” Prentice didn’t seem like a good risk, joining up on a whim, but he was good with horses and, to everyone’s surprise, had the entrance deposit in hand.
As Mrs. Wickman predicted, their late arrival in the valley meant no planting till spring; they would have to live on stores and on food bought from town. A disappointment, but not a surprise. They could spend the time in preparation, because before they could plow or plant, they had to pull stumps.
They sent Cabot to Jefferson City to obtain their town charter, and a week later he returned with news of the larger world. Panic had gripped the Northeast; banks were failing, prices were dropping. The copies of The Intelligencer and Missouri Republican that he brought back were passed around, studied, discussed. All agreed this was no time to be a chip on the surging waters of the economy.
One settler, a big man by the name of Buford, turned out to be the comedian of the group as well as a quick study in agriculture, unlike Wickman, who had hoed up half a row of corn shoots before someone noticed and stopped him. Cabot was useless with tools but good at planning. Turner and Cabot had walked off the ground for the Temple of Community, and now a crew was gathering limestone slabs from the bluffs along the river for its construction. The Temple would be larger than they now needed, but as Turner reminded everyone, they weren’t building it for the Daybreak of today, but for the Daybreak of ten years from now, or a hundred.
The smell of biscuits and m
olasses brought him out from the covers. He slipped up behind Charlotte and put his arms around her waist.
“There’s the slug-a-bed,” she said, turning and tapping his nose with her fingertip. “I thought I might have to send in the dogs.”
“Not all of us can see in the dark.”
“Oh, I can see in the dark. And I can live on spiderwebs and hoarfrost. And I can read minds too. More shingles today?”
“Till noon. Then I need to spend some time on the next Eagle!”
Turner had drawn shingle duty this week. Splitting them wasn’t so hard, once Webb had showed him how to find the grain in a piece of wood and split along it, how to swing the mallet easily to conserve strength, how to position the froe so that the shingle wasn’t too thick or too thin. By the end of the morning he would have a respectable pile. The work was repetitive enough that he could compose his articles in his mind, and then in the afternoon retire to the shed and set them into type, sometimes not even bothering to write them in longhand first if he had the paragraphs clear enough in his thoughts.
Charlotte paused behind him and wrapped her arm over his shoulder. “I’m glad you’re keeping up with The Eagle,” she said. “Not all the important work is done outside.”
“The Eagle is like to be what keeps us through the winter,” he said. “We’ll not be self-supporting this year.”
They were interrupted by a soft knock at the door. It was the youngest Cameron boy. “Papa says come out and look,” he said. “Something’s coming.”
Turner fetched his hat and coat and stepped out the door. Up the road he could see a long line of wagons, twenty or more, led by a man on horseback.
By now just about everyone had heard the creaking of the wagons and the snorting of the horses. The group did not take the turn into the colony but stayed on the main road. The lead rider spurred into a trot for a moment and reached him ahead of the rest. Turner stepped into the road.
“Good morning,” Turner said, extending his hand. “Will you stop for breakfast?”
The man was a thick, leathery-looking sort in a buff coat. He had a chaw in his mouth the size of a walnut, and he paused to spit over the other side of his horse’s neck before reaching down to shake Turner’s hand.
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