Saints (44 page)

“I was looking at the city,” Charlie said.

“And which city did you see?” asked Joseph. “The one
I
see, or the one that’s there?”

So Joseph knew that Charlie had been transfixed by vision. “The one
you
see, I think.”

Joseph threw an arm around his shoulder. “It’s a rare man who can see the true city in spite of the buildings. Everything you need for happiness is here.”

Against his will Charlie thought of Sally Clinton, who also burned, who also was alive in this grey winter. If I have not quenched her, Charlie decided, I will warm myself at her fire. “Should I get married, Brother Joseph?”

If Joseph was surprised at the non sequitur, he did not show it. “By all means, Brother Charlie. Don’t put it off until you find the perfect woman.
She’s
already married.” He gave Emma an affectionate squeeze, and cold-faced Emma loosed a smile of surprising warmth—it was brief, though, like a flash of light from a distant lantern. Charlie compared this distant woman to Sally, and thought that his own home would be a happier place than Joseph’s. Sally Kirkham. The Prophet had said, “By all means.” So after all the advice he had rejected, it turned out to be the will of God on this day of vision.

“Will you come see the plan of the temple with us, Charlie?” asked the Prophet.

Charlie shook his head. “I’ve left my own work too long already, if you understand me.” He couldn’t help smiling.

Joseph nodded. “Don’t be shy. Ask her right out. If it’s the will of God, she’ll say yes without so much as a breath.”

“Yes, sir,” Charlie said. He couldn’t keep himself from grinning now, and Joseph laughed back.

“Does he remind you of anybody, Emma?”

Emma also smiled. “I can’t decide if he looks like the man I ran off and married, or more like a silly-faced pig in a wallow.”

“It’s the same look, Emma,” Joseph said.

“I know.”

Joseph winked at Charlie, then turned and led Emma and the troupe of disciples back up toward the temple site. The afternoon sun picked that moment to come under the clouds and light up the posts and flags that marked the building’s dimensions. They seemed to grow in the light, rise tall and golden, as if the temple already stood there—one more sign in a day filled with signs. After so long a silence, God was fairly shouting at Charlie today. On the one hand, the damnation Dinah promised if he failed to act; on the other hand, the Prophet’s assurance of happiness if he acted. He watched the Prophet and the fiery temple a moment longer, then bounded down the hill in great, leg-breaking leaps; he had no fear of hurting himself today.

The Clintons lived in a mud-chinked split-log cabin in the poorest part of Nauvoo. There were some snowflakes getting tossed about in the unsteady breeze by the time Charlie got there—they caught sunlight and looked cheerful to him. That was the last cheerful thing he’d see for a while: it was Harriette who came to the door when he knocked. Some expressionless women looked placid as cows, but Harriette seemed more austere than that. More dangerous. Charlie tipped his hat and greeted her. Coldly she invited him in.

Inside, the single room was virtually bare—just straw ticks on the floor for beds, a single trunk that served for wardrobe and everything else, and a chimney in one end of the room that warmed not at all ten feet from it. A few snowflakes drifted in under the ill-fitting roof, and there were patches of mud on the packed-earth floor, a witness to what real weather did to the inside of the house. Harriette was wearing her warmest cloak. In a corner near the fire sat Sally, holding her youngest brother on her lap. Their mother was cooking at the fire. “How do you do?” Charlie said. No one answered. “Is Brother Clinton working?” he asked—it was always a good sign when a man wasn’t home during the day.

It was Sister Clinton who answered. “My husband’s across the river, Brother Charlie, on the Iowa side, in Zarahemla. They have a wee farm there, he and the boys, but we’re to stay here this winter because the cabin’s more snug.”

It must be a hell of a cabin on the other side, Charlie decided, if this one was better.

“River’s freezing over,” Mother Clinton added. “If it freezes hard enough, they say we can cross like a road.”

“That would be nice,” Charlie said. He turned to Sally. “I’ve been told when the river freezes, there’s skating. Would you like that?”

Sally said nothing. Her little brother said, excitedly, “I would.”

“Then we’ll have to go sometime,” Charlie told him. At least someone here was glad to talk to him. But it was Sally he would have to win over, and he refused to be parried. “Sister Sally, I saw you visit at my house today.” He glanced at Harriette. “
Both
of you.”

It was Harriette who answered. “We didn’t think you saw us. If you saw us, we thought, you surely would have waved or come to see us.”

Charlie looked at his hands. “I’m sorry. I should have. I should have come to see you here, long before today.”

“I wish you had,” said Mother Clinton. “We’ve missed you.”

Sally and Harriette immediately glared at her for having proved the weak spot in their uniform hostility. It was all the proof Charlie needed that their coldness was not genuine.

“I stayed away,” Charlie said, “because I was afraid.”

Sally looked hurt. “Am I so terrible that you have to be afraid of me?”

Charlie knew from long experience in talking with women and hearing women talk that if a man once started defending his motives, he was lost. So he changed the subject. “I was walking on Temple Hill today, and who do you think joined me there?”

Sally looked away, feigning indifference. Mother Clinton, however, could not resist a story. “Who?” she asked.

“Brother Joseph. I was standing there, looking out over the city, and I think the Spirit was with me, and I think he knew it. He came up and said to me, ‘Everything you need for happiness is here, Charlie.’ It was as if he heard my thoughts. Do you know what I was thinking of then, Sister Sally?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” she said.

“I was thinking of you, Sister Sally. And do you know what Joseph said then?”

“I’m sure I—don’t—”

“That’s what you said before, Sister Sally, but it isn’t quite true, is it? You know what he said—because what he said gave me the courage to come here.”

Sally turned to him, and the coldness was gone, replaced by uncertainty and, yes, hope. It did Charlie’s heart good, to see her so hopeful of him. “Why should you need courage to come to me?” Sally asked.

“Because of what I’ve known I would do, next time I saw you, even though I have no reason to hope you’d say yes.”

Charlie heard Harriette breathe quickly at the door, and now Sally’s expression changed to one of quiet repose. She was sure now why he was there. “What did Brother Joseph say that—gave you courage?”

“‘Don’t be shy,’ he told me. ‘Ask her right out. If it’s the will of God, she’ll say yes without so much as a breath.’”

Sally could barely stop herself from smiling now. “What do you mean to ask?”

“Maybe I just don’t have enough faith, Sister Sally. I’m still afraid. What if you answered no?”

“I’m a good Saint, Charlie. I’d never make a liar out of the Prophet.”

Impulsively, Charlie took a step toward her. She stood then, and Charlie could not help but notice how her bodice moved quickly with her breaths. Charlie reached out, and slowly, carefully she walked toward him and rested her hand on his. She was trembling slightly. So was he. It was not her answer that he feared, however. It was his own changeable heart. Only this afternoon he had been annoyed at the way everyone pushed him toward marrying Sally. Now he not only was proposing to her, but also was indecorously glad of it.

And yet he could not doubt his desire for Sally, nor his gladness at the happy way she looked at him. It made him proud to think this woman could want him so. Only a fool would think he had chosen unworthily; nor, he thought proudly, would anyone doubt that she had married well. He smiled at her. “Sister Sally, will you—”

“Yes,” she said.

“Marry me?”

“Not even a breath, the Prophet said.” She smiled.

He took her hands in his and kissed them. “I expect I should ask your father,” Charlie said.

Mother Clinton spoke from her place at the fire. “I don’t think you’ll have much trouble there, Charlie. Only a week ago he said, ‘I wonder what’s taking that boy so damn long.’”

“I had to be sure I could support a family. We’ll be married as soon as my factory’s built and started running.”

Sally looked dismayed. “How long will that be?”

“Depends on how fast I push the men to work.”

“Day and night,” Sally said. “Build it in a week!”

“Sally!” Mother Clinton said.

Charlie only laughed. “Don’t worry, Mother Clinton,” he said. “She can’t be more eager than I am. We’ve put this off too long already, haven’t we, Sally?”

In answer she clung to him. Yes, he knew how that body felt, pressed against his. Charlie held her shoulders gently—more passion than that would not look right, not with others looking on. A bit embarrassed, he looked away from Mother Clinton, away from the little boy, toward the door where Harriette watched, watched distantly, as if from the wrong end of the glass; and for the first time she did not seem frightening to Charlie. Rather she looked afraid. It was loneliness she was foreseeing now, and her sister gone. It’s you I’m hurting, Charlie thought, watching her. But I don’t mean to. I’m just doing the will of God. There’s none of us can resist
that
. Even if I wanted to.

Harriette broke the silence. “Will you stay to supper, Charlie?”

“Oh, Harriette, there’s nothing fit to serve company,” Mother Clinton said.

“But Charlie isn’t company now, is he?” Harriette looked pointedly at Charlie. He understood. Take my sister, Harriette was saying, but take her family, too. Charlie would have the roof fixed. Charlie would see to it there was enough to eat, and warmth enough in the house. Responsibility was not an unwelcome burden. He was a competent man, and would gladly prove it to anyone.

Charlie got home soon after supper, and after letting his mother complain at him for coming home late without sending word, he told his family what had happened that day, from his conversation with Joseph to Sally’s saying yes. Mother tried hard not to gloat over what she regarded as a victory. Father had the wisdom to give no further advice about marriage. There was no wine for celebration—they toasted Charlie with thin tea. “May you have a dozen children,” Anna said. “May you never hunger,” John said. “May you be glad of Sally every morning, and may she be glad of you every night,” said Dinah.

In the quiet light of one steady candle, after John and Anna had gone to bed, Charlie and Dinah talked.

“We’ll find our own house now, of course,” Dinah said.

“Of course not,” said Charlie. “Sally and I will move into a cabin, that’s all.”

“When your factory’s up, we won’t want to live here anyway. We can afford it, I think. I’m making some money. And Father has his first commission.”

“For a portrait?”

“Hyrum Smith’s wife, Mary.”

“How much?”

“Enough for a few months’ rent on a cabin.”

“I won’t have you living with dirt floors. I won’t have it said that Charlie Kirkham lived in luxury while his family starved.”

“We won’t starve, Charlie. And this house isn’t exactly luxury. Besides, you can’t afford to support two houses.”

“I can.”

Dinah looked at him sharply. “Where do you suddenly come by all this money? A factory, and still enough left over to marry and keep two households?”

“I’m going to prosper. Sally and I won’t marry until the factory’s going.”

“And if you fail?”

“I won’t.”

“Failure is not impossible for a Kirkham,” Dinah said. “There
are
precedents.”

“I’m not Father.”

“But you are Robert?”

“I’m a capitalist, not an engineer. What I’ll create is money, not
things
.”

“Soap and candles aren’t things?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yes, I do.
I
believe in you. Why does Mr. Ullery?”

Charlie saw no reason not to tell Dinah how the Prophet had helped him. “Because Brother Joseph does.”

At once Dinah became suspicious. “The Prophet arranged your loan?”

“I think so. Don Carlos hinted. Brother Joseph believes in me, too.”

Dinah could not help but wonder if it was faith that prompted Joseph or if he was, in the only way possible to him, courting her. See what advantages come to your family when you are bound to the Prophet. It made her angry to think that he thought her such a whore. Then she caught herself, and reminded herself that it was also quite possible that Brother Joseph believed in Charlie. How arrogant was she, to think that she was the only person in her family that the Prophet might love?

And then she was ashamed at how she trembled at the thought that Joseph loved her.

“What’s wrong?” Charlie asked.

Dinah shook her head. “Nothing,” she said. “Finish your factory quickly, Charlie, and get that woman indoors. She’s the wife you need. You’re good enough for each other—that’s a rare thing.”

With that, Charlie thought he understood. Of course Dinah was upset. Charlie’s marriage was a reminder of Matthew, and, worse, of Val and Honor. “How can I be glad, when you’re suffering, and I can do nothing to relieve you?”

Dinah laughed and patted Charlie’s hand. It was an old woman’s gesture, and her voice was not young when she spoke. “Rejoice again and again, and I’ll be gladder for you than you are for yourself.”

With that she left her sewing and went off to bed. Charlie sat there after she left, thinking of how poor Dinah never deserved anything but happiness, and now, with neither husband nor children, with no possibility of marrying again while Matthew lived, now happiness seemed completely out of reach for her.

Feeling, as he had all day, that God was especially close to him now, Charlie generously put in a good word for Dinah in his prayers. Lord, I pray you, remove all the obstacles that bar her now from happiness. It’s time that things went right with her, if goodness is to be rewarded at all in this world. Dinah is still young, could still bear children and make a home if only she were free to marry.