Nicholas stepped off the boat at the Nauvoo dock and looked around him. His legs felt shaky, and the shrill whistle of the steam engine’s valve still throbbed behind his temples. The city had looked a fair place when he gazed on it from a distance, approaching from the river. But now, passing slowly down Parley Street, the enchantment that distance had lent dissolved into the reality of poor houses, even more miserable hovels, and clusters of tents crowded with thin, weary people. Mud and the dank smell of the river was everywhere. If I came home to get well, in mind or spirit, Nicholas thought glumly, this was certainly the wrong place to come.
He inquired of several people on the street before finding one who knew his people and could direct him to them. To his horror he discovered that his family had only a tent of stretched calico to protect and house them. When his mother saw him, standing stooped and hesitant in the low, narrow doorway, she threw herself into his arms, buried her head on his shoulder, and cried like a child.
“I am all right, Mother. Everything is all right now,” he soothed.
She lifted her head, and he was staggered by how much she had aged since he last saw her. Her cheeks were sunken, the skin of her face deeply lined and wrinkled, and her hair had turned gray.
“Where is Father?” he asked. “I’ve been so anxious to see him.”
He read his answer in her eyes, but did not want to accept it. “Where is Father?” he cried.
His sister, Lizbeth, came up and placed her hand on his arm. “He died in Missouri,” she said, “before we left.”
Nicholas broke away from both of them and sat down heavily on the packed earth, all his strength drained from him. “Tell me about it,” he said. He had heard snatches of the story of the events in Missouri from the other passengers on the steamboat. But that the Saints had been forced from their homes was not a new tale. And there had been such excitement and hope for the future in the voices and faces of the passengers as they talked among one another that he had dared to hope, too.
“Tell me about it,” he repeated.
His mother sunk into her old, scarred rocker. Lizbeth settled on the ground beside Nicholas, hugging her knees to her chest.
“We were some of the last to leave,” she began, “because Mother had been ill and Father refused to let her attempt such a journey in her condition. Finally the mobs forced us from our home at bayonet point, at first refusing to let us take the bundles and goods we had secured on a little cart Father had made out of parts of an old wagon. At last they relented, after much cruel taunting, and we started off. But after a few rods Father stopped and began digging through our belongings to find an old shawl to put around Mother’s shoulders. It was bitterly cold.”
Lizbeth shivered, as though remembering too vividly. Her eyes had taken on a glazed look, shaded and impenetrable.
“The mobbers must have thought he was looking for a gun, or some other weapon. One of them sprang on him and struck his knife into Father’s shoulder, slashing cruelly. They laughed to see his pain and Mother’s terror. ‘That’ll teach you,’ the one with the knife said. ‘Now get out of here while we’ve still a mind to let you go.’
“We joined the hundreds of Saints heading east. We were on the road over two weeks, though some made the journey in eight or nine days. But Mother’s health did not improve, and Father’s wound festered and made him suffer greatly.”
She looked up to see Nicholas gazing fixedly at her with such naked pain in his eyes that she attempted a smile.
“ ’Twas not as bad as it could have been. Thanks to Brother Brigham and the Committee for Removal, there were relief stations scattered along the way which provided camp poles and wood for fires, and sometimes food. But the weather was raw, and we were always cold. When we reached the river bottom of the Mississippi it took us four days to cross it through water and mud sometimes up to our knees. We didn’t know how bad Father was. But the infection had spread in red streaks down his arm. When we reached the banks of the river he collapsed. We made a bed for him there, and he never rose from it again.”
She paused, but the silence was more painful than her words had been. Nicholas could picture his father struggling to get his family to safety before he would let himself die.
He rose and stumbled out of the dim tent. But there was nothing to hide him. Instinctively he found himself heading down to the river. There, in a stand of old cottonwoods, thick with dead brush and mosquitoes, he dropped to his knees. He cried, cried with the abandon of a child, cried for all the anguish he had felt and seen and experienced—and not been there to prevent.
Six to eight weeks’ effort, the brethren said, would erect a small cottage. Nicholas wondered. When he surveyed his handiwork, after working three weeks with hardly a stop, the structure did not seem anywhere near halfway complete. There was no one save his mother and sister to help him, for all else were in like condition. And he had noticed from the beginning that his mother’s strength seemed broken—or maybe it was her spirit that was broken, and little was left after that. They were a pathetic trio, Nicholas thought. But he kept his thoughts to himself and tried to count the ways in which they were fortunate. They had been able to purchase land at a greatly reduced price, being counted as one of the families who had suffered the most during the Missouri persecutions, losing husband and provider. The discount was a blessing indeed. Despite their precarious health, not one of them had yet taken sick with the ague that was confining hundreds to their beds and claiming lives by the score. Lizbeth, though but fourteen, was an excellent seamstress and had obtained work that would bring in a small income, enough to live on until the cabin was completed and Nicholas, too, could find work.
There were many other reasons to give thanks. They had their lives and they had a future, God willing, here in this place. The prophet was alive and among them, and their enemies were over the river, separated by the broad brown expanse of the Mississippi. And for Nicholas there was another blessing. He had noticed from the first that his mother needed him, turning to him continually for comfort, strength, and advice. This had never happened before. After losing a whole family of daughters, she had sorely wanted another when she had decided to try for a family again. But he had come first, and when his sister was born her gratitude had known no bounds. She had a loving husband to care for her, and an infant daughter to fuss over. Though Nicholas knew she loved him well, she had not needed him as she had the others.
Now all that was changed. Nicholas was the first one his mother turned to, and he could see the joy that he brought her increase and soften her careworn features with each passing day. It was obvious to him that his life had been preserved for this purpose. And he was willing to serve, to give of himself to his family and to the kingdom. But in the back of his mind, after all this was done—the building, the planting, the growing, the settling in—surely there would be a place in his life for his own cherished dreams. The letter he wrote before he left England should have reached Miss Cooper by now. She would at least know he was alive and safe and that he had not forgotten her. Pray heaven she would understand and soften her heart toward him. If he were to recount the history of the Mormons for the past several months, she would not be pleased. She would not understand, and she would be frightened. He must move with care. As soon as this house was up and standing on its own feet, he would write her again, give her the Nauvoo address, and try to make her see the progress and promise this city offered. Nor would he be feeding her tales. There was something here in the very air of the place. Perhaps heaven had sanctified this spot for the Saints. Certainly the essence of brotherhood and compassion abounded here; he could observe it in practice on every side.
Each day as his strength increased and his house progressed Nicholas felt invigorated, and his spirits rose along with the rough-hewn log walls. His days were consumed with labor. At night he fell into a deep and restful sleep, free of anxiety and devoid of dreams.