Читать книгу Tributary - Barbara K. Richardson - Страница 14

CHAPTER 6

Since I’d arrived, age six, I had never left the bounds of Brigham City. I had only ever known the communal thrift of the United Order, where every householder contributed his all to the Church stores and received in turn just what he needed to sustain his own. This ensured the survival of the town and gave the Church supremacy. It kept us humble and bound us to our place. Some men were called to farming, to husbandry or carpentry, according to their talents and their means. Bishop Dees was a weaver, the best in town. He’d brought his looms with him from England. I had been called to sew the holy long johns, which I much preferred to wearing them.

My friend Ada didn’t rail against this holy Mormon communism. She simply said I ought to see the fruits of capitalism firsthand. I asked if their fruits were different than the peaches and apples Homer Tingey grew. She laughed and insisted that we travel to Corinne.

We left one mid-morning in June, when the valley trembled with heat. Ada’s wagon followed the raised railroad tracks west. I asked her why the Union Pacific had chosen Corinne as their transcontinental link, when Mormon men had laid the rails with their own hands.

“A snub,” she said. “A snub to the Prophet. They used our labor and they paid Brigham Young handsomely for it. That was all the linking up they cared to do. So Corinne grew up on the banks of Bear River, the Gentile capital of the territory.” She eased her elbow into my side and said, in mock solemnity, “If Brigham Young moved the Wasatch Mountains forty feet west, the Gentiles would erect a monument to continental drift.”

I swooned as we drove over the bridge that spanned the Bear, the broadest river I’d ever seen. More a table than a river, it held little boats and flocks of birds and cloud patterns on its top. The marvels of Corinne only started there. Red awnings marked the several hotels downtown. Tiny dogs pranced on leashes among the strolling Corinthians. Ada drove right past the dock leading out to an enormous paddlewheel steamer, whose flags shook in the wind. This excursion boat hauled lumber for the railroad and Gentiles for pleasure, up and down the length of the Great Salt Lake.

Wonders promptly ceased when Ada turned off the main street and parked by the Methodist Church. We’d been warned about the apostate church in Corinne. I kept still, expecting scythes to drop or nets to fall. But the plain clapboard building produced only a small man in shirtsleeves, who carried a fishing pole.

Ada said, “That’s Pastor McCabe.”

“He’s the apostate leader? The ruler of the Gentiles? That little man?”

She grinned. “It’s a slow trade, shopping for souls in Corinne.”

Ada wished the Pastor a good day and we headed to town. Ladies smiled as they passed. A businessman made way for us. A little girl on tiptoes pressed her nose into the blossoms of an apple tree. The entire street was lined with saplings in bloom.

“Well, I see nothing to pity here, Ada, and no one to scorn.”

“In truth, you might, if we toured the portion of town given to gambling and soiled doves,” Ada said with a frown. The white streaked rafters in Lars’ barn, the cooing and the acid scent, the rustle of wings settling—but my soiled dove- musings were interrupted by a gentleman calling to Ada.

She took my arm and squeezed it.

Her face bloomed into gladness as he crossed the street, and that was the rarest sight I’d seen. She introduced me to her friend William Godbe, who took my hand and asked if I was a daughter that Ada had kept from him. Ada laughed and said, “Lord help any would-be daughter of mine. This is Clair Martin, an artist friend.”

We lunched with William Godbe and his two friends at a Gentile farmhouse outside of town. They served white oyster soup and store-bought bread, tearing off pieces and dunking them in their coffees. Ada laughed out loud, a bachelor among bachelors, swearing oaths and talking business. After lunch, in the parlor, she sat next to William Godbe and listened to him exposit and held his hand. The three men sobered to their subjects: polygamy and revelation and free will. They dissected each, as if they had a right to, and called the Prophet Brigham Young to task. No statement went undebated, until Godbe claimed that the highest principle of the coming age was the equality of women with men, and his friends roared their assent.

“Therein,” Godbe said, rising to his feet, “therein lies the downfall, the inevitable end of the Law of Celestial Marriage. The disparity of the sexes essential to it forever deprives woman of all but a portion of male society, while men possess a corresponding excess of female society.”

“Together with excess of power, excess of say-so, excess of glory.” Ada almost grinned. “Together with those.”

“Precisely! Woman should be man’s equal in marriage. Equity is the basis of perfect law. But we are left with our dilemma: how do we end this sorry system, this imperfect one-sided order of social life which we endure? It has been weighed in the balance, and found wanting, sadly wanting, in the chief essential of human happiness to both sexes.”

Males and females equal, and happiness for both? I sat wondering at this notion until Ada said, “I chose to marry and I ended that marriage by choice when polygamy came. Each should answer for themselves.”

“But my dear Ada, how many Sisters are as strong as you? Most are bound to their homes by dependence, fearing poverty. Some are bound by the ungodly duty of keeping face. Still more vexing are those wives bound by affection and unselfish love to their extended family, though threat of eternal destruction has wrung their hearts sorely.” William Godbe paced to the window and back. “In the end—in the end, no ties but those of affection and their own free will should continue to unite women to their husbands. Love and free will!” He fixed me with shining eyes. “What, Miss Martin, do you say to that?”

I sucked in breath and stilled my feet. I’d veered from anger to concern to hope, to a dazed sort of anxiety for the welfare of the children while listening, my mind a thimble and his talk a stream. “I believe . . . well, I’d say, Mr. Godbe, that as long as you go about will-ing, you aren’t like to be free.”

It stunned them silent. It stunned me too, unsure I followed my own meaning.

Ada laughed until the ceiling shook. “Ain’t she a pistol?” All of them joined in, and the little knot they’d formed in the room loosened. William opened the parlor door. The breeze smelled of reeds and cattle. I looked out into the tall shade cast by cottonwoods. I stepped outside. And there was Zion.

The peaks of the Wasatch Range looked cut from paper. The mighty Bear River was a strand of green amid miles of uncultivated sage and salt. The land was not a fortress, here. It spread out like a cloak, an opened fan. For the first time in my life, the power of distance came clear to me: the magnitude of distance and its attendant freedom. Freedom being both empty and full. Radiant all. And that was that.

I didn’t want to shake my fist at life like a spoiled child, day in day out, asserting my will or God’s will or anyone else’s. That shaking fist explained most all of the people I’d known. I closed my eyes to absorb the Gentile view of freedom. Not abandonment to evil as I’d been warned. Not a frivolous freedom, either. No one to pity here, no one to scorn, myself included. The warm cloak of afternoon pulled in around me.

That night, visitors came to call. Swede coughed out a string of epithets as two men knocked and identified themselves as Visiting Teachers. I aimed Ada’s pistol at the latch and said if they needed to visit, they’d best do it where they stood. Come hell or the Prophet Joseph in a cloud of glory, I would open my door to no one after dark.

A hand smacked the door, turning Swede all fangs and frenzy. “You will not let us in?”

“I doubt I could contain my dog, Brethren.”

Then their questions started, close as the door frame, and I wondered who was teaching whom.

“Did you travel to Corinne, today, with a Mrs. Ada Nuttall?”

Bear’s ass. A gun couldn’t save me from this.

“And didn’t you and Sister Nuttall take company in the persons of several men?”

“And weren’t those men,” the second voice shrilled, “Godbeites? Weren’t they, out east of town?”

“Godbeites?” I disliked the relation to William’s surname. “What I know, Corinne has just one church, the Methodist. And I’ll admit, Ada insisted we drive out to visit that poor lone cleric Pastor McCabe and his pretty white house and all the cows you’d ever care to look at—”

“You and Sister Nuttall socialized with a Protestant minister, all afternoon?”

“I wish I’d known you were in Corinne today, Brethren, you could have joined us. The pastor makes a fine oyster soup. I assured him that the very next Sunday no worshippers attend his church, he is welcome to come join us at the Second Ward. We would make him feel at home on the Sabbath.”

“You asked—”

“Course, he declined, saying the inside of a Wardhouse put him in mind of a chicken coop, and he would rather clean his vestryments and go fishing.”

A silence followed this, then a voice pressed the door. “You contend and assure us that you and Ada Nuttall did not meet with any Godbeites this very afternoon, out east of Corinne?”

“If there’s a Godbeite minister who needs consoling in Corinne, I would be glad to give him my best welcome. Would you pass that on to Bishop Dees, Brethren? I’d be willing, if I should ever go back. He has my word on it,” I said.

Then I let Swede rush the latch and the Visiting Teachers stopped visiting.

Ada blenched. She smoothed her hair back with both hands and tightened her apron. She seemed smaller when her face wasn’t set to lead the charge. In fact, she stood no taller than me.

“You was questioned?”

“I lied for you. And I want to know, was it worth my lie?”

Ada leaned against her kitchen table, pale as a bowl of lumpy dick.

“Who is William Godbe, that you would take us into harm’s way to visit him? What are Godbeites, and why do the Elders care if we met with them? Why were we spied on? And, just for verity’s sake, does the Methodist pastor live in a pretty white house out east of town?” I smiled.

“Let’s us sit down,” Ada said.

A trace of steam rose from the Ironstone tea pot. I took down a cup and poured Ada some tea.

“If I am damned,” she said, “it’ll be for endangering others. When did they come?”

“Dark of the night. Two Visiting Teachers, though they never did get around to teaching.” I smiled again, Ada the one who usually got to be wry.

But Ada only trembled. “And you told them . . . ”

I spun my tale for her, then said, “Hell’s breakfast, Ada, did you take us to some apostate church?”

“No, honey dear, worse. Apostate church, political rebellion and literary gadflies—all three in one. You genuinely think you’re better off knowing all of this?”

“I am nine-tenths ears.”

Ada sipped her tea. “Well, some folk, much as they love the Church, cannot sit by and be dictated to, dominated like they was children. William—that man has traveled the world, has a business mind to rival any, educated and forward looking. Well, he’d lost several fortunes following the Church lock step for twenty-odd years, and then it settled on him, knelt on his chest like a fiend: he could go on casting his fate to the steerage of others, or he could stop and speak for himself.

“So William did speak, in respectful tones, but he spoke what he believed, his very own views on doctrine and labor and wages. That was the Utah Magazine. William loves a free press. The Prophet, you may know, feels otherwise. William Godbe was excommunicated. And he lost his fortune, yet again.”

“How so?”

“When a man is cut off from the Church, Clair, his earthly goods are up for the taking, fair gain for any Brethren who can get their hands on them.”

Spiritual death involved a physical death, too. It chilled my bones. “But he survived it. What happened to his two friends?”

“Excommunicated. For refusing to believe God Almighty intended the Priesthood do their thinking for them. Brigham and the Brethren had a heyday at that council meeting, feasting on three carcasses at once.”

“You haven’t made mention of their church.”

“Well, William talked with angels. For three nights, he asked them questions and garnered guidance. Providence, he was given to know, would demolish the worst of the Prophet’s work so that the best might be preserved. And that was the start of Godbeism.”

“It sounds like blasphemy, I have to say, Ada, friends of yours or no.”

“Only shows how far this Church has shifted on its base-stone. Hardly find the man any more has visitations, or the grandmother blessed with second sight. That was the early fire fueled this people: personal communion with Heaven, angels and spirits among us in the Latter Days.”

“I can’t believe William Godbe talked with angels.”

“We all did. And still do.”

She appeared not to be joking. Which raised in me a protective concern. “So, tell, are you in danger, that the Brethren watch your moves?”

“They suspicion me of every evil. Catching me at a Godbeite gathering would have locked up me and my future. I’ve brought you in too close. Forgive me, Clair.”

“The Elders took my story. For the while, I think you’re safe.”

Ada pulled a small sage bundle from a basket near the door. She lit it and waved the pungent smoke all over us. “Shoshone custom. Sage clears the pain from the pure. May we be blessed.” Then she rapped the table and offered to fix a meal. She sifted flour into a pile on the board and cracked eggs in a bowl, humming in her loose-cocked way.

“You fond of William Godbe, Ada? He surely had a shine for you.”

She whipped the contents of the bowl till her hair flew into a trot. “He’s married. Two times over.”

“He’s a polygamist!”

“Must trouble him, nights, him and his drive for equality—those duplicate wives.”

“And you claim no interest of your own?”

She let the spoon float free and gave me all her attention. “I admire his mind, I’ll confess it. I believe he approves of my strength and daring. You seem awful attentive, Clair dear, to the winds of court and spark.”

“You were the one held hands with William Godbe in the parlor. I only marked the holding. Did you hear, Ada, that Bishop Olsen’s taking himself another bride?” I couldn’t help but tell it. The news made me feel mean. “It’s Jensine Waylet. We sat school together. Jensine and me were baptized the same day. You know who did it, who dunked us? The Bishop, only he wasn’t Bishop then, he was Elder Olsen. He baptized her and now he’ll marry her. Must be thirty years her elder. Tom Dean’ll be pleased—he’s only been courting Jensine since Florrie left.”

Ada flipped the cakes on the griddle. “I guess Sister Olsen will be as well satisfied with one sixth of a husband as with one fifth.”

I shoved the bench back. “How is that fair? Tell me how that is right. Taking young girls off to do your pleasure while the young boys have no chance, not an earthly claim to offer in compare.”

“You think it’s pleasure, pleasure they’re after? God in Heaven, honey dear, Mormon men aren’t lechers. Most don’t have the imagination!”

I saw Inger, that white head, that lank body standing to one side watching his new mother Jensine with a look wouldn’t be found out, as quiet as a beast blended in with its surroundings—hungry heavy beasts parading as men. “Tell Jensine Waylet that in Bishop Olsen’s house!”

Ada shook me as the tears spilled out, then shook me again when I would not speak. “What is it?” she said. “Tell it, Clair! You tell me what has poisoned your heart. Tell me who, and tell me when.”

I pulled the old scab off. It bled.

“Well you was raped, sure enough, by that sneaking

pusillanimous pup, but not in full, not according to the letter of the law. Did you know his rod? His penis-bone, honey, I’m sorry to be so blunt. Was it naked in you? In between your legs? You’d a known it.”

Inger had raked my bosom, he’d pinned me to him with the broom, he’d banged on me and bit down on my skin, but never was he once between my legs, never once, I felt quite certain.

I told her I thought no.

“The sniveling runt. He’d better sing low and keep out of my path.”

“So, Ada, I’m still virgin?”

“Honey, yes.”

This cruelty carved deeper, that I had suffered so from an unfounded fear. The Saints did not give comfort or help to a daughter in need. They offered haughty self-delinquent mothering tyranny!

“How did you stand it, Ada? Stand the nights when you lived with your husband?”

“You mean the loving, the mating up? Every sweet has its bitter. You got the bitter alone.”

“What sweet? I saw Florrie Gradon, last week, on her first trip home. She took my arm—my dear married friend—and whispered, ‘It is a mean thing. Quick and mean. Consummation it is called, and they consume you!’ Her words gripped like spoiled food in my belly. Inger hurt me once. That ache, that brutality, now it’s Florrie’s daily bread.”

“You’ve had a bad introduction, a poor start into the pleasures of things, that’s all. I could have told you Lester Madsen had a kink in his bridle. My guess is his daddy set the crimp. As for Inger—” She covered my hand with hers. We smelled cakes burning. “Someday, Clair, someday when you’re at hand’s grips with love, he’ll just be a memory, like offal, like smoke.”

“You sure there’s a sweet as well as bitter?” I asked, though I knew it for myself. Sweet sat on Ada’s mantel in the parlor. Every time I stole a glance at the photograph of her son Stephen on that massive horse, my heart burst open like a rangy sunflower. Jensine had chosen age and the comforts of the fold over untested youth. I wished her well. I doubted, when it came to love, that I would be so tractable.