Saints (43 page)

His tone was so insulting that she was speechless in disbelief. He was the one who had asked for the impossible, and yet now he spoke accusingly, as if she had offended him. But his face immediately softened. “How could I expect you to take this, Sister Dinah? An unmarried man would have courted you, but I can hardly do that. A clever man might have found a way to do this gentler, so you wouldn’t be taken by surprise.” His eyes glazed with tears. “God has given me no harder commandment to obey. Nothing could be more against my nature. Or against yours, I think. I’m sorry.”

“Then let this be the end of the matter,” she said.

“I’ll not mention it again, if that’s what you mean. But it won’t be the end of it. The Lord has commanded it, and you
will
marry me. Of your own free will, you’ll come to me and tell me that it’s time.”

“It will not happen,” Dinah said.

The tears spilled over his eyelashes. “I wish with all my heart that it would not.” Then he turned from her and left the room quickly, as if she were the seducer and he the virgin fleeing from the mere suggestion of a sin. She wanted to scream at him to come back. But what would he do then? He could not unsay what he had said. And she could not change the fact that she had never been more certain of his truthfulness than at the very moment she had proof that he was false.

She took her basket and left his house, terrified that at any moment Emma would appear before her, and know where she had been, and know what had been said. Terrified because Dinah knew that she should confess to Emma, tell her at once exactly what her husband had done, and yet she knew that she would not. Dinah would keep silent about it, would conspire with Joseph that far at least, to keep Emma ignorant of it. In her heart she was already a traitor, even though Dinah was sure that she would never accept his unspeakable proposal. For she also knew that her very silence was the first step toward accepting it, and to her shame, deep within her she was glad.

Charlie’s factory was still only a naked frame, but Don Carlos pointedly walked through the door. “I want to see it the way it’s going to be,” Don Carlos explained. “You can bet it ain’t worth seeing the way it
is
.”

It was the respect that was true, not the joke. Charlie spread his arms and asked, “What do you think of it?”

“I feel a draft.”

“Putting on the walls may cut part of that.”

Don Carlos strode to the fireplace. “I suppose this is where all the soap will be made.”

“And the candles.”

“Then I suppose you’ll want your own office as far from it as possible.”

“Of course.”

“And you’ll spend as little time there as possible.”

Thinking of the possibility of someday serving as the Prophet’s scribe while living off the income of the factory, Charlie nodded.

“A man after my own heart, Charlie. I know men who work all their lives just so they can get enough money that they don’t have to work anymore. Hell, I’ve got that
now
.”

“You don’t have any money at all.”

“I’m better off than
you
. This place must have you up to your ears.”

Charlie shrugged. “If you don’t have any capital, you have to borrow some.”

“What I can’t figure out is how a mere child like you could get a rich man to lend to you.”

“I know what I’m doing,” Charlie said. “I’m a good credit risk.”

“Of course you are,” Don Carlos answered, pushing a knot through a plank. “You’re not nineteen till summer, you haven’t got a dime in the world, you’re living in a house you can’t possibly pay for, you have no job, and you’ve never worked for a chandler or a soapmaker in your life. Of course you’re a good credit risk.”

Charlie didn’t understand why it was funny, but went along, as always, with the joke. “Brother Ullery recognized my true worth, that’s all.”

“Old flint-heart Ullery. They say the only man he’s ever lent money to before is the Prophet Joseph, and even then he let it be known he regarded it as a contribution—he didn’t expect to get it back.”

“He’ll get
this
back,” Charlie said.

Don Carlos grinned and turned to the half-built stairway. “Is this place going to have a second story?”

“An attic room, at first. But someday there’ll be another floor, depending on business.”

“You really have your eye on the future, don’t you, Charlie?” Don Carlos balanced his way up the stringer. “Lovely home, mum, but the stairway’s a bit narrow. Could do with a banister. Oh, look here, what a view! I can see the entire ground floor from any point in the second story.”

While Don Carlos clowned, Charlie made connections in what he had said before. Flint-heart Ullery never lent money to anyone except Brother Joseph. Charlie was a poor credit risk, after all. It didn’t take a fool to figure it out. “So Brother Joseph got me the loan.”

“He believes in you.”

Charlie understood. Brother Joseph believed in Charlie Kirkham, but not in his own brother. Don Carlos would never have got the loan. “I’m sorry,” Charlie said.

Don Carlos dropped suddenly from the rafters down to the floor, rolled and came up half-sprawled. “Oh, Charlie, why can’t I be more like you? I work hard—sometimes, anyway. The paper comes out, doesn’t it? The children are never very hungry, they’re decently clothed, most people like me well enough. Even my wife. But I’ll never amount to anything.”

Charlie knew that what Don Carlos said was at least half true. But there were other ways to measure a man besides money, Charlie knew. “He loves you more than he loves anyone. Everyone knows that.”

Don Carlos leaned back his head and looked straight up into the roof. “Winter is a hell of a time to build a factory.”

“I know. I’d rather clerk for Brother Joseph at no wages. But he won’t take me.”

“Because there are enough beggars in Nauvoo. Make this place prosper, Charlie. Employ some men and pay them decently. Get rich. Then Joseph can afford to have you beside him. He likes you.” Don Carlos let his head hang farther and farther back, until he could see through the frame to the house beyond. “Your house has a certain charm to it, upside down. Like a boat. Does it leak?”

“A little.”

“You can bail. And look! There’s part of your menagerie. Two by two. Only they’re going out instead of coming in.”

Charlie looked where Don Carlos pointed. Two women were emerging from the house. He grimaced. “The Clinton sisters.”

Still upside down, Don Carlos intoned, “Like blossoms, they turn their skirts upward to the warm face of the ground.”

“They visit whenever I’m not there. Conspiring with my mother to get me to marry.”

“Not necessarily a bad idea. Do you get to choose which one you want?”

“I have things to do before I get married.”

“Who scrubs your back in the tub, Charlie?”

Without thinking, Charlie blurted out the truth. “My mother.”

Don Carlos laughed, then rolled over and looked at Charlie with an earnest, comical expression. “Those Clinton sisters, they look like they could bear fifteen children each and not hardly notice it.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Charlie said.

Don Carlos got quickly to his feet. “Are you now, Charlie? Do you think this factory makes you a man, because you can sign your name and walls go up? Well, let me tell you a secret. You aren’t even
here
until you have children. You don’t even
exist
. But when you’ve got them, when they love you with their whole hearts and trust you with their very lives, Charlie, then you could watch a hundred factories like this burn, and you could walk away whistling.” Don Carlos jumped through the wall onto the ground outside. “I don’t know what you think you’ve got to do before you get married, but whatever it is, it isn’t worth a damn.” He grinned and tipped his hat. “If I’ve offended you, sir, it makes me very glad.” Then he turned around and loped away down the road toward home.

Charlie stayed in the building for a while, deliberately not thinking about Sally Clinton. She was all wrong for him, whatever Don Carlos said. He didn’t need a baby factory, he needed a rich man’s wife because by God he was going to be a rich man. Sally Clinton, pretty as she was, had the manners of the working class. Charlie had been around enough moneyed men and ladies to know the difference. Sally simply wouldn’t do, not in the future Charlie had planned for himself.

He tried to admire the factory to take his mind off Sally. But Don Carlos had taken away the pleasure of it. The wind picked up a little. Charlie cursed the weather and went into the house.

Mother was ready for him when he came into the house. “It’s apparent, Charlie, that for all your good judgment about other things, you are not a good judge of women.”

“I take it that Sally Clinton came to call.”

“You know she did,” Anna said. “I saw you and Don Carlos notice the Clinton sisters when they left. You didn’t even have the courtesy to wave. Charlie, why do you suppose Sally and Harriette come only when you’re not at home?”

Charlie knew why. Because Sally didn’t want to burden him with her affection if he didn’t want it. So instead she burdened him with his own mother’s remonstrances.

“Charlie, a man needs a wife who is strong where he is weak, and who needs him where he is strong. That way they can face everything together. There are hundreds of women in Nauvoo who have just the strength you need. But none loves you more than Sally Clinton.”

“What is it that Sally Clinton has that I don’t have?”

“Practical good sense, that’s what. An eye for what is possible. For the cost of things.”

“I have been figuring costs and income and profits and losses since I was little.”

“I wasn’t talking about money.”

“Mother,” Dinah said from the cluttered nest where she sewed every day. “You’re doing your cause more harm than good.”

“Everyone is wiser than I am,” Anna said.

“Except me, of course,” said Charlie.

And now, from his easel and paintpots by the window, John Kirkham spoke. “I’m not the best one to give advice on marriage, Charlie, but will you listen to me a moment?”

“No,” Charlie said.

“Yes he will,” said Anna.

“There are two kinds of women that a man can marry,” said John. “The kind that’s stronger than he is, and the kind that’s weaker. I’ve lived with both, Charlie. It’s hard to live with a strong woman, because she makes you afraid sometimes, and sometimes you feel like you aren’t in control of your life. But let me tell you, boy, it’s a damn sight better than living with a weak woman, because many a man isn’t as good as his woman, but I never knew a husband who was
better
than his wife.”

“I don’t need advice on marriage from you, sir,” Charlie said coldly. “Or from any of you. There’s not one of you who was particularly good at choosing a mate for yourselves, and it takes some gall for you to presume to choose a wife for me.”

It was a rebuke his parents had no answer for, Charlie knew. Only after a few moments of painful silence, however, did he remember that Dinah was in the room. And when he looked at her, the expression on her face told him that he had unwittingly hurt most deeply the one that he would never wish to hurt at all. “Dinah, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

She shook her head and looked at her sewing.

“Dinah, I know you never chose your husband, I didn’t mean
you
.”

She looked up at him with eyes full of tears, and spoke with a voice husky with held-back pain. “Damn you if you don’t marry her, Charlie. Damn you for thinking you’re better than her.”

Charlie looked at his sister in shock for what seemed like several minutes. Then he fled the room, fled the house, and ran. Uphill, crosslots, the most difficult path he could find, all the while thinking how unfair it was, they were all against him, Don Carlos and Mother and her husband and even of all people
Dinah
and what possible right did they have to try to push him into marrying someone who was beneath him just because she was good and strong and pretty and loved him more than he deserved—

And when he came to that thought he stopped cold. She loved him more than he deserved, that’s what he was running from. Any woman who actually loves me can’t be good enough. He remembered that evening in Manchester, when he had desired her. He desired her still. Be honest, Charlie, admit it to yourself. You watched her closely all the way across the Atlantic. You knew every time she smiled at someone else, and even though you were saying to yourself, That’s just the sort of lower-class man she should marry, you were jealous as hell.

Charlie looked around and discovered that he had run to the temple site. He studied the flagged and posted ground where the temple was to be and he imagined it being built, the rising stone of the walls grey in the overcast light, the scaffolding climbing it like winter ivy, looking dead. But it was still only a dream, and the vision would not stay. He turned from the place, gazed down at his own hopeful factory, the new wood still bright, and understood something he had not really seen before. The shacks and cabins of Nauvoo were scattered like dirt clods across the frozen ground. But the place was full of seeds. He was one of those seeds. Yet it was as Don Carlos said, he didn’t really exist until he bore fruit.

Suddenly, as he looked out over the city, it changed. The pitiful curling threads of smoke from kitchen fires thickened, became great belches from furnace stacks; the greyish, weathering cabins became red-brick factories and row houses, or graceful mansions like Hulme’s; the streets were cobbled, were edged with tame trees, and carriages clopped noisily along. He could hear the laughter and the energetic talk of the businessmen, the cries of tradesmen. It was the hidden city, the one that would grow from the ten thousand seeds here. Didn’t they see that he was more than just a common man? Didn’t they know that the voices in the future city were speaking to
him
, the laughter was at his jests? People craved his advice—should we invest in the railway, Brother Kirkham? Or the textile mill? Should we bring the Pennsylvania coal down the Ohio, or ship it the longer, cheaper way, round the lakes? Will you sign with me so I can get my start, Brother Kirkham? Here’s the interest on your loan, Brother Kirkham. I can repay you the money, Brother Kirkham, but never the faith you showed in me when no one else believed.

I am needed here. My flame can ignite this city. Why else did Joseph get Ullery to invest in me? It’s industry, it’s business that this city lacks to come alive, and I can do it, because I have seen the vision of the smoky, bright-faced, laughing City of God, and I know how to build it. There’s more to life than just fathering babies. If that’s all I care about, I’ll end up a failure like Don Carlos.

It was a cruel judgment, and it wasn’t true. Don Carlos wasn’t a businessman, but somehow he still wasn’t a failure. There was something wrong with Charlie’s reasoning, but he couldn’t think what it was.

“I’d say he looks more like a sentinel who dozed off standing up.”

It took a moment for Charlie to realize that these voices were not part of his vision. In that moment the woman spoke, and her voice explored him as deep as the fountains of desire. “I’d say he’s more like a tree that grew up overnight.”

“In this cold?” asked the man.

“Blossomed in the morning with frost on his limbs, bore fruit this afternoon, and now shines ripe, with golden fruit and golden leaves.”

“I don’t know about him being a tree, Emma, but I’d say he’s deaf as a post.”

Charlie recognized the voice now, and the vision fled away west, over the Mississippi into the haze of the far shore; the shanties were back, with only his new factory bright as a spark in the cold grey ashes of Nauvoo. He turned around. Joseph and Emma were not twenty feet off, with a few dozen others trailing away up toward the temple site.

“Don’t move, Charlie,” Joseph said. “You make such a pretty figure there.”

“I’m sorry,” Charlie said. “I didn’t know that you were here.”

“I know. We were so quiet.” The people behind the Prophet laughed at that. They all looked so small and uncertain behind Brother Joseph.