The Wedding Dress (5 page)

Mrs. Smyth took the pages and pulled the candle close. “Dear Ones,” she read slowly, “I take my pen in hand. Don't suppose you will receive this for some time. It is October now. We made good time to Oregon, but we really pushed to get here before cold weather. We'll stay here with the trappers until spring. The country is fair, lots of trees and water. The beaver and fox are so thick they beg to be trapped.” Cynthia's voice labored over the pages and in the droning, Rebecca's mind slipped away from the fireside scene; her thoughts were filled with drifting clouds, the shining dome and the dark-coated stranger.

She caught the final words. “I won't be home this next year after all.”

Rebecca visualized the prairie of golden grass, the buffalo, and towering mountains. Looking around the room at the quiet faces, seeing the resignation creeping across Cynthia's face, she felt her restlessness build.

Tyler spoke, “I hear tell this place will be deserted once all the Mormons go. Seems a body would think twice before leaving. The West will be covered with them.” Cynthia nodded, but Rebecca felt her spirit had been plucked free by Joshua's letter. She closed her eyes and felt the sway of a prairie schooner.

During the winter, the state continued to rumble with the unrest in Nauvoo. Hardly a day passed without a new tale of woe. One day Tyler returned with an old newspaper. He spread the pages on the table and they hung over it.

It was the
Alton Telegraph
dated October 11, 1845. “Well,” Tyler said, “things are gettin' pretty serious. I don't reconcile their carryin'-ons with religion, but this here says the good people of Illinois have determined to see them out of the state by spring or there's going to be trouble.”

Rebecca frowned. “They'll force people to go because they don't agree?”

“There's law. When there's a bunch who want to make their own laws and don't abide by what's on the books, well, guess they'd better go.”

“But what are they doing?”

He turned to Rebecca, “They're settin' up their own charter, like they're a separate state within a state. Brigham Young's printin' his own money. The state's buzzin' ‘counterfeit.' That's not settin' easy.”

The snows came early that year, and they were heavy. It was nearly Christmas when Tyler stomped into the house with a new tale. “They say a bunch raided three families on the outskirts of Nauvoo.”

“Mormon families?”

He nodded. “Drove them out, and they had to spend the night in the schoolhouse while they watched their houses and barns burn. Lost everything.”

Cynthia sighed and said, “Well, at least no one we know would act like that.”

Tyler said slowly, “Might as well know; there's rumor Lank's been in on it.”

They looked at Rebecca, and she knew what they were thinking. As she turned away from their eyes, she studied the shabby room, thinking about Matthew's wistful wish for a cookstove for his mother. She thought of Lank's slicked-down hair and hungry eyes. Overlapping her thoughts was the memory of the laughing, dark-haired stranger. Rebecca wiped moist hands across her apron. She was conscious of her new slender waistline and the tightness of her dress across her bosom. Try as she might, she couldn't recapture last summer's desire to stay a child just one more year.

In January, Tyler drove home in a smart new buggy. It was as light and trim as a sugar scoop. He had acquired it for the price of a bag of wheat. While they rejoiced over their good fortune, Rebecca was thinking of those women who would be riding in awkward wagons behind plodding oxen. In some ways she was wanting to weep for them, but her curiosity was beginning to feel like envy.

In February of 1846 the grip of winter loosened its fingers long enough for winter-wearied folk to take one deep, sweet breath of spring; and then in paralyzing force winter clamped down once again.

Tyler came home, stomping, steaming, and worried. “They're moving out. The silly fools are moving out in this cold.”

Matthew pried Rebecca away from the fire. Swathed to the ends of their noses, they rode the horses to the bluff overlooking the river.

Like a long snake writhing its way across the frozen river, the wagons moved in majestic slowness, winding the life out of Nauvoo. “The fools,” Matthew echoed his father with awe in his voice. “It's near twenty below zero, and they're moving out. No one could possibly hate them that much to send them out now.”

During the spring, like echoes rebounding from barren cliffs, the news trickled back. On the first night across the Mississippi, in the poor shelter of canvas at minus-twenty degrees, there had been nine babies born.

The Saints were learning to live with hunger, miserable cold, and then the clutching hands of spring-thawed mud. Slowly but surely they were inching their way out of a miserable past into a unknown future. Rebecca found herself being pulled into a sympathy that lifted her beyond the Mississippi and the farm on the hill. More and more her thoughts wandered away, wondering, imagining, straining toward those prairies, those towering mountains Joshua talked about.

And then there was another letter from Joshua. In April 1846, amid blossoms and baby chicks and lambing time, with Rebecca's fifteenth birthday, the letter came.

That day Rebecca had again crept away to the loft to lean against the old leather trunk, to part the layers of cotton and touch the creamy silk and pink velvet.

It had been so long. Now the faces of her mother and father were dim, the sound of their laughter forgotten. Even this reminder of their love failed to stir the memories. She smelled the mustiness of the trunk and wondered about those words her mother had spoken. Why did the trunk hold her only hope of true happiness? Rebecca touched the wedding dress and wished she could cross that barrier to touch her parents once again.

She replaced the cotton slowly, tucked the bundle back into place. Underneath was a hard object. It was her mother's Bible. Pulling the Book from beneath the dress she turned the pages carefully. In the middle was the record of her parents' marriage and on the next page, the record of her own birth: Rebecca Ann Wolstone, April 15, 1831. The page for recording deaths was blank, and she moved her fingers over the sheet, wondering when she could bring herself to write in those facts.

There was also a page for children's marriages. She imagined herself clad in the silk dress with the pink velvet rosebuds spilling down the front. She would toss back those deep lace ruffles and, taking a pen, would write on that page. Beside her would be her bridegroom. Even her vivid imagination wouldn't supply a name.

Rebecca sighed and turned more pages. Strange, as much as she loved to read and had yearned for books, she had never tried to read this Book. She closed the cover and gently ran her hands across the scuffed and faded leather. It was too precious to be read.

Just then Prue called. “Becky, Pa's back from town, and there's a letter.”

Rebecca spilled down the ladder and took her place at the table. “Almost a year!” she exclaimed, watching Tyler carefully open the soiled sheets. “And it's come on your birthday,” Prue added. “Is that better'n a penny?”

“Today,” Cynthia said briskly, “there'll be cake. Not many more birthdays will that young lady be having in this house, and we'd best make the most of it.”

Their attention was on the letter now. Tyler cleared his throat. “Dear Pa and Ma, Matthew, Becky, Prue, and Jamie,” he read slowly. Jamie pressed against his father's arm and studied the pages. “I take my pen in hand. It will be harvesttime at home. You will probably receive this letter about the time you expect me home. I must delay coming another season. I am trying to make this camp tight for next winter. I don't want to put in such a time as I did last year. The cold is worse than at home, although in the valley it is mild. I didn't expect to see fruit like this but at home. There is a doctor and his wife here making a mission among the Indians. They have planted the familiar fruit trees—apples, pears, and peaches. To bite into one of their apples is almost enough to fool me into thinking I am home. I hanker for a fried apple pie.” Tyler stopped to clear his throat and Rebecca felt her own throat tighten over the stilted, lonely words.

The letter described the territory and his neighbors. Now he returned to the doctor missionary. “Dr. Whitman is a true Christian gentleman. It seems a shame to waste a good doctor out here on the savages, but it is humbling to see he doesn't consider it a waste at all. He keeps saying something that nags at me. He says it is God's secret what He will do with our lives. I can't take my eyes off those people, but at the same time it makes me want something more than I have.”

Joshua's words bounded through Rebecca's mind, pounding in a disappointing flatness. “Won't be home for another season,” she murmured. “Will he keep saying it?”

All spring and summer the prairie schooners continued to trail out of the state. Each one left behind another empty space in the forlorn city.

As the unwanted ones moved on, Rebecca was drawn down to Nauvoo. Leading her mare down those empty streets, she listened to the silence, experiencing the loneliness,

On the day that Rebecca passed the building and found the door ajar, she murmured, “Even the temple's forgotten and sad.” The door was creaking in the wind, and instantly a resolve was born in her heart. She tied her mare to the branch of a tree and walked around the building. Staring up at the pilasters, the high windows, the gleaming dome, stories she had heard rebounded into her mind. These people believed in baptism for the dead. She shivered and listened to her footsteps echoing as she crossed to the portico. Could it be true that God was not pleased to dwell with His people unless they built such a temple as this? Would He not reveal himself without these rituals? There were no answers, but she discovered a deeper questioning was born.

With heart hammering, she slipped through the doors. Like a bird lured, she darted through the rooms. Disappointed at the barren, stripped emptiness, she dashed up and down the stairs. Now, in the subterranean reaches, in the dim shadows, there was something.

Twelve oxen, cut skillfully from wood, supported an oval basin. It was the font for baptism. She touched the satin-smooth oxen, marveling at the beauty of wood turned nearly lifelike. This labor was a testimony. These people believed in the importance of all they did. These people believed enough to follow a man who was leading them away from home and all that was dear to them.

Now she admitted the reasons for her enthrallment. There was this vision of sacrificing, suffering humanity and it was demanding answers. Like stones buried in a smooth-surfaced pool, she must stumble over these questions or forever cast them from the pool of her mind.

The summer passed, and it was harvesttime. While picking apples with Jamie, Rebecca was reminded of the previous autumn. This year there would be no surplus to sell. She glanced down the hill toward the nearly deserted town. Indeed, there would be no market for apples.