The Wedding Dress (33 page)

The year was pressing past the halfway mark. In July there would be that tenth anniversary of the Saints' arrival in the Great Basin. The year was also pressing toward autumn, relentlessly dogging the steps of the Saints as they worked tirelessly to capture every morsel of nourishment for both man and beast.

Just as hard as the year pressed them, events were pressing too. War was becoming a common word. The
Deseret News
, the settlers' only link with the rest of the world, was carrying an installment story of the Nauvoo tragedy. With heightening suspense, the latest edition was met by eager hands. Each issue was passed around, to be read and reread. Tears crinkled the coarse paper as names were recognized and mourned. The Saints relived the story.

Now a traveling band of actors from Great Salt Lake City toured the towns and forts, presenting the play
The Missouri Persecutions
.

It was July when Andrew came. Rebecca had nearly given up hope of seeing him again. His face was stony. With a sense of detachment, she recognized that it had been increasingly so for a long time.

His face softened only slightly as he studied the contour of the growing child. “When will it be?” he asked.

“I won't count on it until the end of October.”

“Past harvest. The house should be ready by then, and you can be confined in your own home surrounded by family.”

She felt her spirit cringing. Quickly she asked, “How are…they all?”

His face tightened as he watched her. “I suppose they are all fine. I'll see Priscilla when I go to Cedar.”

“She isn't with the others?” She tried to keep the surprise from her face.

“Thanks to you,” he said bitterly. “She's declared she won't live in the same house with you, and if you can choose to live apart from the others, she has that right also. You rebellious wives make a man's life difficult. I'm fair beat down with handling the crops and building the house every spare minute.”

From across the table, he fastened her with a steely glance, saying, “I expect my whole family to be in that house. You'll do your best to get Priscilla there.”

“Then you won't be here long?” she asked.

“No, I'm headed for Great Salt Lake.”

“Again? There's a bad feeling adrift, isn't there?”

“Yes. If we avoid a confrontation with Washington, it'll be because the Lord intervenes. There's rumbles about troops being moved this way.”

“With the new highway, perhaps they'll just be moving through to California.”

“Maybe.” He reached for more bread. “You bake a better loaf than Alma.”

“She's young,” Rebecca said absently as her thoughts ran ahead. It was hopeless, this picture of Rebecca taking her place with the others.

Later he said, “You're quiet. Before when I've been here, you've run on like a young'un just let from school.”

“Just tired, I suppose.” She pressed her hands against the moving child.

“Do you need anything now?”

“No.” She fell silent, picking at the bit of sewing she held.

“Do you still fit on laps?”

“Not very well,” she said. “Being like this seems to move one beyond the need.”

“You're going to be the usual mother,” he said, his voice resigned. “It's the child first, then the father.”

“But isn't that the reasoning behind the principle? It's the future progeny, the housing of souls, that's important.”

Andrew lingered on, and Rebecca sensed in him a relaxing of tension. Lines softened on his face. Despite the sprinkling of gray over his temples, for a few short days he seemed youthful, carefree.

When the day came for him to leave, she followed him as he went to the corral and shook the spindly gate. “I'll plan on coming back before I head to Harmony,” he said, giving Bossy a pat on her rump. “You need a bit of attention back here.”

The following day at Relief Society meeting, Rebecca tugged her needle in and out of the quilt blocks as she listened to the patter of conversation. It was early in the hour and the thrusts of words were tentative, light, ready to be withdrawn at the earliest threat.

She was thinking of how these meetings had changed during the past months. From a cozy group of women who liked and trusted each other, the mood had warped, twisting into this wariness. It was the pressures, the fears that had been voiced in secret. But she knew the fears must be shared or soon they would become a divisive rope, capturing and pulling them away from each other.

Last winter's harsh sermons with the demand for unity and sacrifice now seemed a gamble that had worked. Rebecca knew it was because the call for action had come down from Brother Brigham. That had given sanction, eased the troubled minds, and allowed the hard doctrines to be accepted.

“Rebecca,” Maude Cline shifted her bulk and addressed her. “If you intended to be this quiet, you might have saved yourself the trouble and stayed home.”

“'Twasn't my turn to talk,” Rebecca answered smartly. “I've been standing in line for half an hour. See how much quilting I've done just listening.”

“Well, it's your turn now. Hear tell that Brother Jacobson's been back and is on his way to Great Salt Lake. Been so long, 'spect you didn't think to see him again.”

Maud had a way of getting a person's back up, and Rebecca deliberately thrust her needle twice before answering, “He's been pretty busy building a house.”

“Reckon the Legion's more'n keeping him busy.”

“Oh, Maude, what've you heard?” Sister Gardner was leaning forward. “My man don't do much talking, but he's looking grim after those meetings.”

“I hear Washington's boiling mad over the Legion.”

“Law, I don't know how the rumors build. Legion's no worse than the others.”

“They're militia. Taken one by one they're pretty harmless, but together—”

There was silence, and for a time the needles moved rapidly.

“Rebecca, I hear your husband's heading up the Legion in this area.”

“You don't approve?”

“Law, somebody's got to do it. My husband and every man's obliged to fight.”

“It isn't the defending that's got me worried,” Margaret said slowly. “It's the feeling that's boiling down underneath. Sometimes ideas catch on in a bunch of men, whereas on their own they wouldn't give them a thought.”

When Rebecca and Cora walked home together, Cora asked, “Is it all right?”

“With Andrew? Of course!” she laughed. “Were you expecting him to do me in?”

“Don't joke about such things. A body can't be certain when things are cutting right down the middle of a man's beliefs.”

They walked the length of the road in silence. Finally Rebecca said, “Cora, the thought of living out my life, raising my baby under the eyes of those other wives, just grabs me by the throat. I know I can't tolerate it. One thing about Andrew, when he comes he's different. It's not the same man who leaves my side later. If we could be together alone, it would be heaven.”

“But heaven's going to be plural marriages. Forever and ever. It'll never change because it's written in the revelations. Becky, you'd better face up. You know as well as I that there's just no other way. Failure means—”

Rebecca's voice was breathless as she said the words she knew so well, “Means, being cut off forever. It means damnation—the wrath of God. It is only through the husband that the woman can be saved.”

They stopped beside Rebecca's gate. Cora's eyes were dark, and the worry lines on her face had deepened. “Becky, you're my dearest friend. I wish I could gentle you down before something terrible happens. What if you'd die on the childbed before you reconcile yourself to accepting?”

Rebecca took a deep breath. “What if I were to believe the Bible in all the places it's different from what we're being taught?”

“What do you mean?” Cora asked slowly.

“I mean the places where it says that Jesus is God, and He saves from wrath.”

“I don't understand. We believe just exactly the way the Bible teaches.”

Rebecca was shaking her head. Inside she was feeling a rising excitement. “No, we don't, and I'm beginning to think the missing link is Jesus. See, if He's more than our elder brother, if He's really God, there's God power in what He did. It says that He died on the cross to be the Atonement Lamb, and if we just accept it—like a gift—then we'll have all our sins forgiven forever. We'll escape the wrath of God.”

Cora was shaking her head. “It's too simple. At least with this, I'm living my religion. I feel like I'm doing something.”

“You do?” Rebecca studied her friend's face and her shoulders sagged as she turned to fumble at the latch. “Me, well, knowing what's down inside of me, there's no way I can harness this rebellion. There's no way I'll ever be able to face God. Deep down inside I know I'll never be righteous. All I can think about is the wrath of God. If blood atonement is bad, think how much worse the wrath of God is.”

She opened the gate. “Nights I wake up thinking. Seems the other way is the only way that offers a hope.”

“The Saints'd never accept you.” Cora was shaking her head. “I'm going to pray that the Heavenly Father will strip the blinders from your eyes and let you embrace the truth once and for all.”

“Oh, Cora, please do that! Jesus said the truth would make us free.”

Andrew returned hot and tired from his long trip to Great Salt Lake City. Immediately Rebecca recognized the restless, troubled spirit of him. She drew him into the dim, cool cabin and brought milk chilled by the mountain stream.

As she buttered bread, she asked, “It wasn't a good trip, was it?”

“The mood's bad. There's such a bunch of people ready to kick over the traces.”

“Apostasy?”

“Yes, wanting to go to California and let Washington have the place. Doesn't help that practically everything we've set our hands to has failed or is on the edge of bankruptcy. California sounds a little like heaven compared to this place.”

“Do you think it's all going to fail?” Her hands waved toward Pinto.

“No. Brother Brigham won't let it. He may be forced to excommunicate the lot.”

“Excommunicate?”

“Send the whole lot to hell.” There was silence while Andrew ate, and Rebecca pondered the contradictions. Brother Brigham claimed the power to do that, yet Joseph Smith's writings indicated that only the Sons of Perdition would suffer hell.

Before he left for Harmony, Andrew took Rebecca in his arms and kissed her. “My little Becky, please remember we are free. By the action of our parents, Adam and Eve, we have our eyes opened to live. We were redeemed from the fall by Jesus, and that frees us to choose good or evil. There's not one thing in life that makes it impossible to choose the right.” He kissed her again and left.

Rebecca was remembering verses in Romans. The apostle Paul recognized the impossibility of doing right without God's help. After making up his mind to do right, he found himself doing the thing which he hated. He said sin dwelt in him.

Rebecca was standing by Cora's table. Her fingers rested lightly on the two books. One was the Book of Mormon and the other was her mother's Bible.

Excitement tingled through her body. “It's true,” Becky insisted. Cora was still looking at her in disbelief. “I really searched it out. After Andrew left it was so hot, and I was feeling poorly. This time I started in the Book of Mormon. Now, because I've been reading so much in the New Testament, I could see the parallel.”

“What's that?”

“Well, for one thing it says right in the Book of Mormon that Jesus is God.” She thumbed quickly through the book. “I've read this before, but it never really made sense. Now here, in Second Nephi, it says there's a God and He is Christ. In Mosiah, it says that Christ was the God, the Father of all things. Later on it says He came to live on earth and take upon himself a human body. Later, in Alma, I read there's only one way mankind can be saved and that's through Christ. Oh, Cora, don't you see! It's just like the Bible—almost.”