from the rest and Jim hobbled the horses. “We’ll meet you back here, Poker, after,” Ada said. She and I merged into the crowd.
A bower had been built to frame the stage. A dozen chor-isters stood assembled. Brass instruments flashed with the light from passing lanterns. Brother Gradon, Florrie’s father, sat at a small pump organ. The crowd was easily a thousand strong.
We lay a blanket in back and settled in as the horns blew their first notes, a high winding curve that seemed to be mapping loneliness. The channels of loneliness. The deep loneliness of Christ. In church, they said his death betided comfort, but I only ever felt sorrow. How he could stand to die misunderstood, one such as him. Where was the deep and abiding comfort in that?
The horns sharpened. The crowd stood to roar its greeting as two men mounted the stage, one thin, the other broad as a grist wheel, whose presence had been kept secret from us. Apostle Lorenzo Snow and the Prophet Brigham Young stood grinning at the crowd, happy as little boys holding striped lizards.
The shock of recognition, the burst of pleasure from the assembly more than gratified the Prophet—it deified him. He looked out, waved his fist and the brass horns played their last.
The Apostle offered the opening prayer. Then Brother Gradon struck the first notes from his organ for the opening hymn. It sounded like no hymn had, ever. The chords reared up a wall of sound, as if the wood encasing the pipes must burst—but the wall was not to stay and the notes came down, friable as sandstone, as soft shale. Out of that grumble of dashed chords came the cry of two sopranos. Alleluia! Alleluia, Praise and Glory to our God, for His judgments are true and just.
The horns made answer, draping low, and the male choristers entered the song. His judgments are true and just. They stair-stepped up and down, taunting the women to try and stop them. Now Brother Gradon stood in front, conducting, while the horns mourned all of the world’s dull unforgiving work, and the altos fled before them, lost, cold birds. Glory to our God, Praise and Glory. Brother Gradon flung himself, arms wide, down the length of song and the music, in answer, held him up. It held the crowd up, held us safe against gales of trouble and doubt. I wept at our good fortune, our sure
inclusion, until I looked at them, at the blank faces, the babies lost to sleep gripping their mother’s bosoms, and the plait of concern on the Apostle’s brow as he watched Brigham Young lean heavily on an elbow, eyes scanning the heavens, his big boot tapping out its own time.
I watched that slow black boot until a different time-keeping caught my notice. Near the platform, Poker Jim moved to the music. He held his arms aloft like Brother Gradon, his hips crashing in arrhythmic waves. The children nearby hopped from leg to leg, clapping at Jim’s crass enjoyment. I closed my eyes on all their silliness and their indifference. I left everything but the sound of the music, which soon ended as it had begun, with Brother Gradon at the organ, playing the chords down, gently down, like a mother singing, beautifully, to naught.
The crowd sat utterly silent. Ada took my shoulders. I leaned back and let her have my weight, heart open, eyes closed, while Brother Gradon and his players took their seats.
The Prophet walked to the lip of the stage. He stroked his beard with his great head cocked to one side. “You all of you know how much I love this city.” His voice, soft as lambswool, soon rose in pitch and vigor discussing the Utah and Northern, his great Northern Rail. Labor and wagons, graders and gravel, none had escaped his concern. The Prophet laid it out for us, laid it plain as if the rails already rang before us with the heat of an oncoming train, and Brigham City stood enriched, the shops busy and all the tables fully laden.
I saw the Prophet’s scene in my mind’s eye, but something imminent scotched the vision. Below the platform, clutching a watch chain that did not hang from a vest he did not wear, Poker Jim stood, the spit image of the Prophet. When Brigham leaned, Jim leaned. When Brigham cocked one foot over the other, Poker beat him to it. And when the Prophet grew spirited—waving his arms, challenging the assembly to accept God’s call as the architects and the builders of Zion—Jim slid in a paroxysm to and fro, his mouth about to retch, working around big, unsavory O’s.
I gripped Ada’s hand, even before the Elders grabbed Jim and hauled him out of sight.
“Ada?”
No word from her, just a nod.
“Can’t we go to him?”
Ada tightened her grip.
The Prophet stood with both arms raised. His massive hands could have stopped a flood or wrung a hundred necks as easily as given shelter. “In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I promise you, I guarantee it: any family willing to take up this great task and give labor and wares to the completion of the Utah and Northern Rail, I say all of those families will rise up whole in the Last Days and be greeted by the Prophet Joseph Smith himself. There will be feasting. Yea, you will feast with our first and beloved Prophet Joseph in the flesh, in the presence of the Lord our God, eternally.”
I strained to hear what might be happening to Jim. I wished myself beside him. I wished I had my gun.
Brigham palmed a slab of hair off his forehead, and pointed into the crowd. “Those of you who lack faith, I say if you lack faith of your own, take mine. Take mine!” He smiled and his mane shook as he slapped his silk jacquard vest. “I am all the God and all the scripture you will ever need.”
I nodded full agreement. I’d had enough of all four—faith, God, Brigham and scripture. Ada grabbed my skirts and yanked me down as I leapt up to find Jim.
Apostle Snow came to Brigham’s side, face of triumph, face of relief. “A plow and scraper with oxen await the Prophet’s signal to begin. Let us proceed to the site behind us and watch the earth be moved!” Crack of guns, Brigham threw an arm around the Apostle, and he waved the Saints to their feet.
The audience broke in two streams, right and left of the stage. I cut a quick line through the body of the crowd, careful to dodge the picks and shovels, then cut back behind the stage. No sign of Jim, no sign of the men who’d taken him. Just streams of happy, ambling folk.
I shoved a tarp up and called his name.
Ada stopped me, all terse common sense. “Remember? Remember what I told him?”
I could not.
“Meet us at the wagon. Short of death, I’d say Jim’s there.”
We covered the distance in darkness. So many wagons had pulled in, I would have searched all night, but Ada led us right to it, the horses still hobbled and no one about.
Cannon fire launched me against the spokes of the front wheel. Wood tore my hands as the team lurched forward. Then bells filled the air, cow bells and dinner bells, and the school bell, a fractured ringing, far off and wild to mark the first strike of the shovels.
Ada called, “He’s here.”
A body lay in the shadows of the wagon bed. Ada asked could he move into the light. Grunting, Jim obliged. The blood from his mouth trailed down to his belt in a streak as wide as his face. One of his hands lay crooked and his legs seemed dead. He scooted on an elbow like an insect minus limbs. Though the sight of blood had always caved me in, I crawled into the back without a thought and placed my legs under, to support Jim’s head.
Ada wiped his mouth. “Jaw’s broke.” Several teeth were missing wholesale, and his lips had swollen up. “Now Jim, what’s the matter with your legs?”
He
