Saints (67 page)

Port rested his hands on the pistols at his belt. “You’re the oldest, I figure you know best. But however you make your bed, I’m lying in it with you.”

Joseph chuckled. “But I’m not the oldest. You are, Hyrum. What should we do?”

“Let’s go back.”

“No,” Charlie said.

“You got no vote,” Cahoon said.

“You’re the President and I’m the Patriarch,” Hyrum said. “We ought to act for the Church’s sake whatever happens.”

“We’ll be butchered,” said Joseph. He wasn’t arguing, just stating a fact.

“The Lord’s hand is in this, Joseph. Live or die, it’ll be how the Lord wants it to be.”

Joseph started toward the river. Rockwell stopped him. “That skiff ain’t worth a damn. There’s some men fetching a better boat from upriver. Be here in an hour or so.”

Joseph looked around as if uncertain where he was. “Charlie,” he said. “Ride to the wagons and get some paper. I need to write some letters. Might as well use your handwriting.”

Charlie was no horseman, and the horse was none too sure-footed herself. Charlie kept kicking her and then wishing he hadn’t as he lurched and stumbled along the uneven path. He was petrified the whole time, sure that he would end up with a broken leg somewhere, and all for some paper. No one would write any epic poems about his self-sacrifice in undergoing agony so Joseph could write some letters. More likely a nursery rhyme.

He kept trying to think of a rhyme for paper. Taper. Caper. Epic poem or not, the paper was what Joseph had sent him for, and by God Joseph would have it as fast as Charlie could possibly get it.

When he got back to the cabin, Joseph wasn’t there. Hyrum saw Charlie’s expression and put him at ease at once. “He hasn’t gone, Charlie. He’s off in the woods praying.”

Rockwell, Richards, and Cahoon were waiting, too. “You let him go alone?” Charlie asked.

Rockwell snorted. “If I had my way he wouldn’t go to the privy alone, but nobody tells Joseph what to do.”

“I think,” Hyrum said, “that if Joseph had his choice how to die, he’d rather be found praying than any other thing.”

Charlie set the paper on the stones of the cold hearth. The room was underfurnished. He had meant to take care of that, but there hadn’t been time. Now it wouldn’t matter.

He felt Hyrum’s hand on his shoulder. “Thanks for bringing the paper, Charlie.”

“I wish it had been an army of angels.”

“I guess the Lord got out of the military business after the Old Testament.” Hyrum drew him to the door, led him outside. “Charlie,” he said, “I wish you hadn’t seen Emma’s letter.”

“I wish I hadn’t, either.”

“I’m afraid you don’t understand why she wrote it.”

“She doesn’t give a damn about his life.”

“That’s why I wanted to talk to you, Charlie. Emma’s always been a bluntspoken woman. She says what’s on her mind.”

“She’s bringing him back to die.”

“She doesn’t believe that. Besides, Charlie, we’ve played this whole scene through before. In Missouri Joseph was in the hands of the mob, under sentence of death, while the Saints were being driven from their homes through the snow. It was a terrible time—but one sure thing was that the Lord protected Joseph. Didn’t protect a lot of others, but the Lord kept Joseph alive. Cooped up in that little jail with his people suffering so, it used to drive Joseph half out of his mind. Once he said to me, ‘At least they could have the decency to kill me instead of torturing me like this.’ Emma knows her husband. Whether the Lord protects him or not, if the Saints were in trouble and Joseph wasn’t with them, he’d hate himself.”

“It hurt him that they don’t care for his life.”

“Yes. The timid Saints hurt him a little. But Emma didn’t hurt him. He knows Emma.”

Joseph’s voice came from around the corner of the building, not ten feet off. “Hyrum, is there anybody you haven’t got all figured out?”

Joseph came around the building. Hyrum grinned at him like a silly boy. “I thought you were going into the woods.”

“Too many bugs. They’re in league with the devil. It’s hard to pray when you’re swatting flies. Got the paper, Charlie?”

So Charlie scribed for the Prophet one last time, rode across the river with him, and said good-bye to him at the Nauvoo wharf. Joseph insisted they arrive there where enough people would see him that there’d be no more talk of him running away. Charlie offered to stay with him, even to surrender with him.

“No, Charlie. You’re the man I needed if I were going to do the sensible thing. Now you just go home to your family. They’re all the duty you’ve got now. You just take care of
them
.” Then the Prophet kissed him and sent him on his way. It was the last time Charlie saw him alive.

Dinah heard about Emma’s letter to Joseph before Reynolds Cahoon got to the boat—the one thing in Nauvoo that functioned better in time of panic was the gossip mill. Dinah knew at once that he’d return and give himself up. She wasted no time condemning Emma. She did not even bother to try to find Joseph and persuade him not to surrender. All through Charlie’s quiet preparations for Joseph’s flight west, Dinah had known what Emma knew—Joseph would never go through with it. The Church was Joseph’s life, and he could not separate himself from it. The difference was that Emma had the courage to tell Joseph so.

I was never worthy of him, Dinah realized then. Even now, I hate the fact that he is going. Even now, if he were here, I would plead with him to be weak, to deny his whole life, to stay alive so I could have him another week, another year, for all my life.

Joseph came to her that evening, came when it was still light in the sky. He did not bother hiding. He stood openly at her door, with several men at his carriage looking on, and he did not even bother to go inside the cabin before taking her in his arms and kissing her. Then he turned and faced the men to make sure that they had seen.

“We’ve been publicly denying the Principle so long,” Joseph said to her, “that some folks might want to claim I never practiced it at all. I don’t want it to be your word against theirs.”
After I’m dead
. Those were the words he didn’t say, but Dinah heard them.

He came inside then, and just held her, standing in the middle of the floor, just stroked her hair, her cheek. “You may just be the most beautiful woman I ever married.”

“You say that to all your wives.”

“If I tried to say good-bye to all my wives, Dinah, it’d be three days before the Governor got his hands on me.”

“Are there so many?”

“The Lord gave me a lot of wives. Just didn’t give me much time. There’s quite a lot who have a ceremony to remember. Precious few who have anything else. I guess I didn’t set a very good example.”

“I wish you wouldn’t go.”

“I will, though. Like a lamb to the slaughter. But it’s funny—I was terrified all the time getting across the river to try to escape. Scared half to death. And now, when I know I’m going to die, I’m as calm as a summer’s morning.” He kissed her lightly. “You tell people. After I’m dead, you tell them that I wasn’t afraid to die. My conscience is clean toward God or anybody. When they kill me they’ll be killing an innocent man in cold blood. You write that.” He grinned. “Feel free to improve it a little if you like. Heroes need grand speeches. That’s one thing I always wanted, to be the hero of my own story. Got my wish.”

He walked toward the door.

“Joseph!” she cried.

“Did I forget something?” he asked.

“I want to confess something.”

“It’s my own sins I’m worrying about right now, Dinah.”

“It’s a lie I told, and I want you to know the truth.” Before you die.

“I already know more truth than a man can know and stay alive in this world.”

“When I married you, I told you I only did it out of obedience to the Lord.”

“I know. I told you the same thing.”

“It wasn’t true. I dreamed of you in England, I wanted you when I saw you wrestling in the mud, and if God hadn’t given me consent to love you I would have loved you anyway, sin or not. I’m sorry that I lied.”

He touched her cheek. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, “but I told the truth.”

She had determined not to cry, but now she changed her mind. “If you die, Joseph, I’m the one you died for, I and all your plural wives.”

He kissed her again. “I never asked the Lord to take
this
cup from me.” Then he smiled. “But don’t take too much glory on yourself, Dinah. I won’t die for you. I won’t even die for the Church, or for God. If I die, it’s because I saw the world true and told people the truth about what I saw. And if it takes my blood to convince them that I meant it, I hope I spill ten gallons of it.”

She wiped her eyes on her apron. “You haven’t got ten gallons.”

“They’ll be disappointed. They all want so bad to have a little of it on their hands.” He opened the door.

“Can’t you stay a little longer?”

He shook his head. “If I’ve got one night left in Nauvoo, I’m going to spend it with my children. I want them to remember their father. They’re young enough they might forget. But you—I don’t think you’re about to forget me.”

As he walked outside, she felt the ground trembling under her, heard her own name in her mind and could not think of what it meant. “What will I do without you?”

“You know what to do.” She followed him out the door, stood beside him. “You just make sure that what I built, stays.” He was looking westward, but she knew he wasn’t talking about the Temple or the city.

He embraced her again, quickly, and then ran toward the carriage. Ran like a boy bounding across a field, as if he were chasing a butterfly, Dinah thought. As if he were excited to find out what the next part of his life was going to be.

He stopped in the middle of swinging up into the carriage. He was holding to the carriage roof with one arm, waving the other. She waved back. Then he pointed at her. “You!” he shouted. “I’ll be waiting for you!”

“You’d better be!”

Then the carriage started moving, and he ducked inside, and the door closed, and that was the last time Dinah saw him alive.

The door opened and the jailer came in. Joseph had his mouth full or he would have greeted him. Joseph was getting along rather well with this jailer. It helped that Governor Ford had helped him get settled and parted with him on friendly terms—the jailer no doubt was influenced by that. As a result, Joseph and Hyrum, the two prisoners, were kept in the reative freedom of the debtors’ room, upstairs in the jailhouse, instead of being locked in a cell. They could have almost any visitors they wanted. Joseph didn’t abuse that privilege, or he might have had an army there. He was not lacking for would-be bodyguards, but he did not want to endanger anyone’s life but his own. He had finally managed to send everyone away except Willard Richards and John Taylor, who were not easy to get rid of. The truth was that Joseph was glad of their company.

Joseph wasn’t sure, though, how far the jailer’s liberality would extend. Prisoners were not usually supposed to have weapons. Willard Richards’s cane was harmless enough, but Brother Markham had left a huge hickory stick that he called a “rascal beater,” and Cyrus Wheelock had smuggled in a six-shooter, which now rested in the bottom of Hyrum’s pocket.

“Supper any good?” the jailer asked.

“Stone cold,” Hyrum said.

“Always is.” The jailer looked around a minute. Joseph watched him, wondering if the man was simply doing his duty or if he meant to betray them. Joseph saw the bulge of the pistol in Hyrum’s coat pocket and wondered if Hyrum would be able to shoot the man if he turned out to be an assassin.

“You know,” the jailer said, “you’ll probably be a lot safer in the cell.”

“No doubt,” Joseph answered. He looked at the little barred window on the heavy cell door and thought how convenient it would be for a murderer to stand there and fill the cell with bullets. “We’ll go in after supper.”

“Damnedest prisoners I ever knew,” the jailer said. “I don’t often have ’em sitting with their friends.”

Willard Richards looked up from his plate of potatoes. “You mean I’m not a prisoner?”

“You know you’re not,” Hyrum said.

“It’s the most insulting thing I ever heard of,” Willard said. “Why aren’t I important enough to arrest?”

“Don’t worry,” John Taylor said. “If somebody breaks in here to kill Joseph, they probably won’t check to make sure they only kill legally arrested men.”

The jailer was annoyed. “Nobody’s getting in here, boys, so don’t you fret. This jail’s the most solid one in the state, or so the Governor said.”

“No doubt the Governor has been in all of them to see,” Willard answered.

“You just go into the cell after supper,” the jailer said. “Your friends can wait right here. And if you start worrying, you just remember that the Carthage Greys are standing guard outside this jail. Ain’t nobody can get to you without getting by them first.”

“
Now
I’m worried,” Joseph said.

“Our Carthage boys are true blue.” The jailer went back down the stairs, leaving the door open behind him.

Joseph got up and closed the door. “Eat slow,” he said. “I don’t want to be locked into that little place.”

“Will they try anything tonight?” Willard asked.

“I don’t know.” People always expected a prophet to know things like that. It was no good explaining to them that the Lord didn’t work that way. “But I’ll sleep a whole lot easier if I know that you and John aren’t in here.”

John Taylor wiped his mouth on his napkin. “I won’t sleep at all if I’m not.”

“If something happens to Hyrum and me, they’ll need you in Nauvoo. The other apostles won’t be back for weeks yet.”

“If the Lord needs us to be in Nauvoo, he’ll see to it we get there.”

It wasn’t worth arguing. John had his stubborn face on, and when John Taylor was stubborn he didn’t bend very easily. Joseph already felt control of things slipping out of his hands. For so many years now he had felt the whole Church, all the Saints as if they were an extension of himself. An injury to one part was always his own injury; he felt the pain more than anyone. Now, though, he felt himself going numb, going paralyzed. He was separating from the greatest part of himself. The most important part. All he had left was his own body, and he felt lost. It hadn’t been like that in the Liberty jail. There he had been in agony for the suffering of the Saints. Now he couldn’t even be sure that they existed, not the way it had always been before. He knew what it meant. The Lord was getting things ready for his death. It meant that when he died, the Church wouldn’t die with him. He should be glad of it. He was, in a way. But that single, vulnerable man he had become—that man was afraid to die. He wondered if he would disgrace himself.

Willard tried to tell a story, but after a while John told him to be quiet. “I want to hear any sounds there might be outside.” And so they sat in silence, not even looking at each other as the afternoon sunlight dazzled in the room, went gold, went red, and then began to grey out toward night.

There was a scuffing noise outside, down in the square. Joseph opened his eyes. John Taylor was sitting bolt upright, and Willard Richards was standing by the door. From below they heard a young voice complaining. “But we outnumber them!”

An older voice faded in and out: “…mouth shut, boy…”

Another voice: “…blanks, better check…”

Hyrum languidly got to his feet. “Sounds like they didn’t let everybody in on the plan.”

Willard rushed to the window. Huge and heavy as he was, Joseph marveled at how quickly he could move, and how quietly. Willard peered out, then came back, his face sick with fear. “They’re all around the jail. Faces painted up, looks like.”

“Uniforms?” John Taylor asked.

“Of course not,” Hyrum said. “They’re pretending to be Indians.” He took the pistol out of his pocket and looked at it. “I hate to use these things. I don’t even like to see them used.”

They heard a noise in the room below, then the sound of someone coming up the stairs. Outside someone shouted unconvincingly, “Surrender!” and a few shots were fired. Trying to make it look like the Carthage Greys put up a fight, Joseph thought with amusement. All it does is prove in the eyes of God that they knew that what they were doing was wrong. Hypocrites confess by their own effort to conceal. Joseph found himself mentally composing a sermon on the subject as John Taylor snatched up Markham’s rascal beater and Willard Richards took his cane. The door opened a little, and Willard Richards threw himself against it, all three hundred pounds of him. There was a shout of surprise or pain outside the door. Joseph stood up. He ought to be standing up for this.

The men on the stairs began to shout. Terrible oaths and threats. I ought to be contemplating the glory of God. At least having a vision. That’s what prophets are supposed to do when they’re about to die. The door pushed back open slowly despite Willard’s weight against it. Hyrum took his position opposite the door and aimed his pistol. The barrels of two or three muskets poked into the room and discharged, even as John hammered them down with his rascal beater. Hyrum cocked the pistol. There was more shouting, and suddenly, the door swung open wider. Hyrum thought of firing. Joseph could see it in his face. But he never pulled the trigger. Half a dozen shots came from the doorway all at once, and Hyrum’s clothing blossomed with wounds. Willard screamed something and jammed the door shut, almost catching John as he stabbed outward with his stick. Joseph saw all that even as he ran to Hyrum.

“I’m a dead man,” Hyrum said. One of the bullets had struck beside his nose, and the blood was smeared all over his face. Joseph eased Hyrum to the ground. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Something had gone wrong. Joseph was supposed to die, not Hyrum. Hyrum was supposed to succeed him at the head of the Church. Wasn’t that what Joseph had planned? He took the pistol out of Hyrum’s hand. The handle was sweaty. It was still cocked. Hyrum never did them any harm at all, Joseph thought, not even to defend himself. Didn’t they know who their enemy was? I am their enemy. And he strode to the door, which was being forced open again, and discharged the pistol six times.

Joseph ran back from the door. He had seen flesh and clothing burst with the impact of the bullets, and it frightened him. That isn’t what I lived for. I never killed anybody before. And in spite of himself he hoped that they weren’t hurt too badly. He even wanted to apologize, the way he always did when he hurt somebody wrestling. Hyrum lay dead on the floor. Joseph looked at him for a moment, and wanted to apologize to him, too. But then he couldn’t think what it was he should have done differently. Couldn’t think of a thing in his life that he should have changed.

Behind him the shouting was worse. He turned. The men were inside the room now; John Taylor was near the window. When had he gone to the window? The bullets struck him, too, and he fell inside the room, writhing in pain on the floor. Joseph couldn’t feel his pain, though. Not even now. Willard Richards was screaming at him from behind the door, where he was pinned when the mob had at last pushed it open. Only safe place in the room, Joseph thought. The biggest man here, and he’s the only one who found a hiding place.

Why was everyone standing there, waiting? Why had everything stopped? Were they leaving it up to him again? Was everything going to stay as it was until he moved and changed it? Even now, did they have to depend on him to take charge of his own death? All right, then. He threw the empty pistol to the ground and ran to the window. You want Joseph Smith? Here I am. Not hiding from you in a room. You don’t have to come in and get me. I’ll come out to you.

He had one foot on the sill when a bullet struck him in the other leg, knocking it out from under him. Don’t be so impatient, I’m coming. He lay on the sill, straddling it, one arm and leg outside. He felt the bullets pierce him on both sides, as if some were trying to push him out, the others push him in. Out, he decided, and felt himself slide from the sill toward the open space outside. The pain struck him then, and he felt his mouth open as he cried out, “Oh Lord my God!” He wasn’t quite sure himself whether he was giving the Masonic cry of distress or a complaint. The ground came as the most powerful blow he had ever been struck, and he felt himself bounce into the air a little. He tried to raise himself up. Stand up. Arise. Then he realized that his cry had been neither distress nor complaint. It was a greeting.