Saints (39 page)

John sat ahorse for some time, holding the letter in one hand. It was only when a wagon came along the other way that he finally came to himself and put the letter away. Wouldn’t do to let himself be seen reading it, if Charlie should turn around when the wagon passed.

That sly devil, John Bennett. He was soaped all over. He’d make a bargain to promote John’s painting, he’d advance Charlie’s career, too, but at the same time he’d protect himself by naming John Kirkham a liar, so that if the day should come that this old man turned against Bennett, why, no one would believe the tale he told.

John wondered if that was why the letter hadn’t been sealed. Probably was. Bennett knew that John would read it, and knew that Charlie would not. Maybe Bennett thought that John would squirm. Well, John admitted to himself, no man likes to hear such things said about him, even when they’re true. But I’m also quite used to having things not be the way I want. Let the Prophet look at me and think me low; what’s that to me? Let him pity Charlie for having a father who’s unworthy of him; it’s true, isn’t it? And when the time comes—and it will come—when I want to undo John C. Bennett, to name him as the criminal he is, I’ll know how to make myself believed. I’m no such fool as to expect them to take my word against his. I’ll paint you in strong colors, Bennett, not in any crumbly charcoal grey, and when I’m through they’ll know you.

John Kirkham sent his horse forward, picking up the pace and drawing Charlie along more quickly behind him. It was time for this journey to end, time to get back to Nauvoo. For Bennett’s letter had spurred John Kirkham in a wholly surprising way. “Maybe if the fellow sticks to painting he will be harmless.” Not the strongest recommendation in the world. The only one that would count would be the work itself. It was time for John to paint again in earnest. There was no taste in America, that was plain, but it wasn’t taste that sold paintings, it was vanity. And of vanity there was no shortage, least of all in the Mormon city at the river’s bend. I’ll stick to painting, Bennett, and then let’s see a few years from now how harmless I am, and how I do at telling truth, if once I set my hand to it.

Dinah had to earn money again, that was the solution. It had worked before, given her a sense of strength, of knowing who she was and what she was supposed to do, until Mr. Uray destroyed it all and forced her into Matthew’s bed. But the work itself had been good for her, working for money, because when the coins fell into her hand at week’s end she had a measure of what she had done, she could change that portion of her life, those hours and days, into food, into house, into clothing, into
things
. It was the alchemy she knew would work: Time transformed into gold.

And it wasn’t as if the family didn’t need money. What savings they had were nearly gone, there wasn’t enough coming in to make ends meet. Charlie and Father were off to Springfield on the Prophet’s errand, which was all well and good except that it meant three days in which they didn’t even earn the pitiful wages they had been able to earn doing odd jobs and making a botch of carpentry. Worst of all, she couldn’t get her mother interested in the problem. Dinah spread the money on the table, but Anna only looked away and said, “I know, Dinah.”

“Well, what can we do?”

Dinah clearly remembered the day, many years ago, when Anna had grimly set herself to make things work: selling paintings, taking the children out of school, moving to a cheaper cottage, finding work, whatever it took to stay alive. But not now. Too much had passed since then. “The Lord will provide,” Anna said.

Well, perhaps He will, Dinah thought, but it wouldn’t hurt to help Him out a little.

The trouble was finding any paying work to do. This city was too new, its growth too unnatural. People didn’t come to Nauvoo because there was opportunity; they came because of religion. But religion wasn’t a sound base for an economy, and as a result even carpenters were underpaid, though it seemed building was the only steady work around. Even bookkeepers like Charlie, whose skills were desperately needed, could not find work because there was no cash for salary. Where, then, would there be work for Dinah?

There were no factories here, where a woman with ten fingers and reasonable wit could get a few shillings a week. The women were all wives or daughters, and their work was all at home. Dinah had never done such work: kitchen gardens for vegetables on the table, ashes saved for soap, milk from the cow in the yard, eggs from the chickens they tended. What they couldn’t make alone, they made together. If one woman had a spinning wheel and another had a loom, then both had a wheel, and both had a loom. If a quilt was too large for one woman to make in a month, a dozen women would frame it up and make it in a day. Where was there a place for a woman to make
money?

She needed advice. She was too new, too English to know what a woman could do for money in America. Emma would know, of course; and as she thought that, she realized that she was already out in the road, walking toward the Smith house. The Smith house. Joseph would be there. Dinah at once turned and walked westward. She shouldn’t impose on Emma, anyway. Poor Emma had enough to do without an immigrant woman adding to her burdens. But whom else did she know?

Brother Heber had often talked about his wife, had often told Dinah to meet her, talk to her, bring her word of how much Heber missed her. That would surely make Dinah welcome in Sister Kimball’s home, at least long enough to ask advice. Dinah would impose on her for no more than a few minutes of talk.

It was easy to find the Kimball home—everyone seemed to know where the apostles’ families lived. The house was an anthill of children, despite the cold weather. They were shouting and laughing and quarreling so that Dinah had to smile just to see them. Yet she noticed that except for the very youngest, they were not playing. They were chopping wood, hauling water, loading hay into a shed for the cow. No one seemed to notice as Dinah opened the gate and walked into the yard. Apparently visitors were common, and the children ran by her, shouting or laughing without so much as a howdy. Dinah tried to remember Val’s face, and if he had ever run and shouted like that. But she could never conjure his face, except in nightmares, with his face covered with tears. As she stepped to the door, a girl bounded out with a basket in her arms. “We’re going to Sister Landen’s!” Then she saw Dinah and stopped. “Good morning,” she said. “You’re early.” Then she leaped from the porch and went galloping across the yard, calling out for her sisters to come with her to Sister Landen’s. Dinah knocked on the door.

Two children brushed past her into the house before someone finally came to let her in. It was a lovely, bright-faced woman who looked to be in her thirties. She was covered with flecks of cloth and small strands of yarn. “Good morning. If you want to be heard around here, don’t bother knocking, just open the door and call.”

“My name is Dinah Handy,” Dinah said. “I was wondering if I might see Sister Kimball.”

“
I’m
Sister Kimball,” the woman said.

Dinah apologized for her surprise. “There are so many children, I expected someone older.”

“I
am
older. I’m a hundred and five, in fact, but I sold my soul to the devil so I could pass for fifty.”

“You could pass for thirty.”

“I love you already, Sister Dinah. Come in. Don’t count the children. A good two-thirds of them aren’t mine. But there’s a good dinner here at noon, and if they work hard they can eat with me.” Sister Kimball led the way into the parlor, where some yarn was strung on a strange wooden machine that looked like a sawing tackle gone mad. “Are you too English to lend a hand?”

Dinah didn’t know what to say. “I’m English, but my hands aren’t made of glass.”

“I’m skeining some yarn here, and I’ve also got some women coming by for these squares. They’ve got to have them to make quilt tops for the quilting bee we’re going to have in my drawing room all winter long, and this morning being the way it is I haven’t been able to get them all counted out, so if you could run the husband-saver for me I could count the squares and you’d’ve made yourself useful enough to hug.”

“I’ve never used one of these before,” Dinah said.

Sister Kimball nodded. “That’s what I mean by English. English ladies never used
anything
before, I get to thinking. Well, do you have the brains of a three-year-old? If you do, you can learn in about thirty seconds.”

“Let’s give it a try.”

“You turn this crank.”

Dinah took hold and turned. The yarn wound easily between the rotating posts.

“When the weasel pops, we cut the yarn, tie it off, string it again, and go to it. The Lord sent you to me, Sister Dinah. I was just praying for help, and here you are. My husband didn’t baptize you, by any chance, did he?”

Dinah cranked away as Sister Kimball began counting colored squares of cloth into stacks of thirty. “He asked me to tell you that he thinks of you all the time.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” Sister Kimball answered. “I was especially worried since he broke his fingers.”

“Broke his fingers? I heard nothing about that!”

“Neither did I. But it’s the only reason I can figure why he doesn’t write. Is there an ink shortage in England? Have all the westbound ships sunk into the sea? Did they stop selling paper for six bits a ream?”

“He probably means to write more often than he does. We kept him busy there.”

“What does he look like? I can’t even remember the color of his hair, it’s been so long.” A child ran past and Sister Kimball called out. The boy stopped. “Is your hair brown or just dirty?”

“Brown, Ma.”

“That’s Heber’s color, isn’t it, Sister Dinah? Tell me it is, or I won’t have any way of knowing which of these children are mine.”

Dinah laughed. Just then a little twig of wood was sprung by the husband-saver, making a sound as loud as a gun going off nearby. Dinah gasped and backed away, afraid that she had broken the machine. Sister Kimball just got up and cut the yarn with a knife that was lying nearby. “Pop goes the weasel,” she said. “Can you figure how to string a new skein on it?”

“I used to thread the spinning jennies—I think I can manage it with yarn, Sister Kimball.”

“My name’s Vilate. You used to work with all those big machines?”

“Every day for years.”

“And a little thing like a husband-saver makes you jump a yard. Oh well. What you aren’t used to is what gives you a fright. Heber wrote me that you were the second most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Near drove me crazy trying to figure out who was the first. He also said you’re worth your weight in beaver skins. That’s a compliment. What’d you come for? I’m pretty sure you didn’t come for yarn-skeining lessons.”

“Maybe I did,” Dinah said. “I came for advice.”

“Well, that’s free. Tell me everything, Sister Dinah, only don’t expect me to answer till I’m through with my count.”

So Dinah told her dilemma while Vilate counted. It was disconcerting to have Vilate triumphantly announce “thirty” from time to time; once or twice Dinah almost decided that the older woman wasn’t listening at all, that coming to her had been a mistake. But she was here, and so she asked her question. “So what can a woman do to make money?”

“Thirty.” Vilate set down the squares. “I can’t talk and count at the same time. So you do the squares now, and I’ll do the yarn.” With that they traded places, and Vilate began her response as if it were an oration. “In these hard times when everybody’s a bit hungry except the dishonest and the dead, it’s hard enough to find work for a man, let alone a woman. But there’s some things that you can do, if you’re not too proud and don’t expect to make more than a pittance at it. If you’re out to get rich, you joined the wrong church and came to the wrong city. But I figure you to be in the right church and the right city, so here’s what you do. It just so happens that there’s a shortage of shirts in this town, and an oversupply of men who need wrapping. There’s also a shortage of money, and cloth is none too plentiful. So if you’re clever with a needle, you beg old shirts from big men, rip out the seams, cut good smaller pieces out of them, and come up with good new shirts for smaller men and children. Then you sell them and you’ve had no cost except labor.”

A few moments of silence.

“Thirty,” Dinah said. “Is anybody else doing that?”

“I doubt it. I just thought of it. Keep counting. The drawbacks are that old shirts are likely to be dirty, faded, thin, and worn. Also, the poor are just as glad to take an old shirt, holes and all, without nobody fixing it up. Gladder, in fact, because they don’t have to pay for it. In fact, just about the only people who’d buy the shirts are people with only a little bit of money and a wish to look respectable.”

“Is there anyone like that?”

“Did you lose count?”

“Twenty-two, twenty-three.”

“Just don’t want any stacks to come up short. Yes, I’d say just about half of Nauvoo has a few cents here and there and wishes to look as if they had more. I’m ashamed to say we have never overcome our love of looking wealthy. Why, you walk around Nauvoo and find nothing but sham. The ones who look real poor are probably better off and just pretending, so that they can live off the charity of their neighbors. The ones who look like they’re doing decent are probably really poor, only they keep up the looks of money. The ones who look downright rich are probably so deep in debt it takes three days for sunlight to reach them.”

“And what about those who are really rich?”

“Why would a rich man live here? In three days Brother Joseph would have talked him into loaning the Church all his money so we can buy land for the immigrants, and then the Prophet’d get him to borrow ten times that much to help the Church pay its debts. Rich people don’t last long here. They either stop being rich or get out quick as they can.”

Vilate’s humor had a sting in it. Dinah heard the sting too well, the humor not enough. Vilate had come as such a relief after this morning of anxiety that Dinah assumed too much, believed that Vilate would answer
all
her fears; believed that Vilate would also answer her doubts about the Prophet. So she plunged in and began to tell her fears about Joseph Smith. But because she dared not confess what disturbed her most, the fact that he had stood half-naked before her and owned her with a look, she began with what she knew was petty criticism.

“You can’t blame people for wanting to look better than they are when they see the Prophet himself doing the same thing,” Dinah said. “I suppose I shouldn’t have expected any better than the sham I saw yesterday, when he bullied a man out of town and then boasted to the crowd about what a fine—”

The husband-saver stopped. Startled, Dinah looked up.

“What number are you at?”

From the dread she felt at knowing Vilate was offended, Dinah realized how much she liked this woman. “Seven.”

Vilate stood up and took the stack from her. “Thank you kindly for your help. I’ll manage just fine from here.”

“I can finish. I’m in no hurry.”

“Sister Kirkham, I’ll gladly feed you if you’re hungry, clothe you if you’re naked, and nurse you if you’re sick, but I won’t be friends with anyone who talks against the Prophet.”

Dinah could not think what to say. She had not meant to talk against Joseph Smith, she had meant to ask for reassurance. Now she could not argue, for she knew Vilate was right. So she fell back on the habit of childhood and said nothing.

With Vilate Kimball responses were merely optional anyway. “A man who has walked and talked with the Savior is not a sham in my book, Sister Kirkham. Others may talk him down, but not where I can hear, and certainly not in my house. I don’t know how to make myself plainer.”

Dinah got up from her chair and started for the door, feeling so humiliated and confused that she made a wrong turn in the hall. Vilate caught her by the arm and steered her the right way. “Mind you, I’m not saying you don’t have a right to your opinion. There are plenty of folks in town who’d be glad to hear any mockery you care to make. I’m just not one of them.”

At last Dinah found a few true words. “I wasn’t mocking,” she said.

“Well, whatever you call it, you said it and I heard it. There’s much to correct in Nauvoo, but where Brother Joseph is concerned, it’s us that need to line up with him, not him who should line up with us.”