In the dimming light, I watched as several of the younger girls, Judith and Martha and Madeleine and Hannah, held and released one another’s hands, making snaking patterns with their arms. It looked like a game they had been playing for a long time together, and I was relieved to see them act like children, at least for a little while.
I noticed that Joanna’s children remained at her side, the least integrated of them all even when we reached the gravestones around the open grave. Not far from her, I noticed a man who looked like he could have been Stephen’s brother, and I gave a start.
A much younger brother, I chided myself when I looked more carefully. He was standing next to another young man who looked very much like Stephen, although not as strikingly as the first. They must be the two oldest sons, Joseph and Aaron, who were at the U. Presumably Rebecca had informed them of the death of their father and they had arrived just in time for the funeral. Did they know anything about the proposed will change? Did either of them have any idea which of the wives might have wanted Stephen dead? That would have to wait until after the funeral.
Away from the city here in the mountains, the air smelled clean and fresh. We were high enough that the exhaust of cars and trains and the industrial plants to the north were below us.
As we stood looking out over the valley, I wondered for a moment what it had been like in 1847, when Brigham Young had famously said, “This is the place.” The desert landscape then must have seemed extreme—sagebrush and tumbleweed, no buildings in sight. The canal system that kept the pioneers alive hadn’t been cut into the land yet. Desert colors of red and gray and brown would have been all that met the eye.
I could imagine women weeping when they were assigned a piece of land to cultivate to keep their family alive. How long until they managed to harvest food from the ground? How many hours a day did they work in hopes that the next year would bring them more than this one had? And when they were asked to share their husbands in polygamous marriages, not to mention their food, their land, their hopes and dreams—how had they borne it?
As soon as everyone had collected around the grave, Carolyn led everyone in singing the famous Mormon hymn “Come, Come, Ye Saints.”
Come, come ye saints, no toil nor labor fear;
But with joy wend your way.
Though hard to you this journey may appear,
Grace shall be as your day.
‘Tis better far for us to strive
Our useless cares from us to drive;
Do this, and joy your hearts will swell—
All is well! All is well!
The hymn had been written on the plains, as the Mormon pioneers walked day after day, often twenty miles a day, through unsettled territory. They slept at night with the sounds of wolves in their ears, and the fear of Indians in their hearts. For protection, the wagons were circled—quite literally—and the people slept underneath the wide wooden slats to escape bad weather.
When the weather was good, fires were lit in the center of the circle, and the meager food cooked over them. Mostly, the pioneers ate fried cakes made of flour and water. When they were desperate, they tried to eat what plants they found on the trail, and those experiments often ended with vomiting or worse.
The penultimate verse of “Come, Come Ye Saints” was about dying on the plains and how it wouldn’t be so bad, since God would reward His chosen people and they wouldn’t have to suffer anymore. Grim stuff, but it was part of our history.
When I taught in the Primary, I was astonished at some of the horrible stories that were told in the children’s manuals. Women who died in childbirth on the trail, whose husbands and other children left the body behind, then came back later to reclaim it only to find no trace of the bones. Small children who froze to death in the middle of the night and whose parents woke next to corpses. Older children set to walk last behind the rest of the train to gather oxen droppings to dry for fuel, who disappeared by day’s end and were never found again. Taken by Indians? By wolves? Lost and calling out for help somewhere?
Mormons are extraordinarily proud of their heritage, and they tend to see persecution of any kind as proof of their righteousness. Maybe being excommunicated had made Stephen Carter feel himself even more justified in his lifestyle, as a descendant of these people who had been chased away from every place they had tried to settle.
As I scanned the group, I noticed two other people I had never met, an older, Hispanic-looking man and a beautiful, dark-haired and dark-eyed young woman whom I guessed to be in her late teens. These must be the Perezes. Had they come up through the break in the fence I’d noticed earlier, or the long way around on the road? I wondered if they knew that Stephen had been murdered and if either of them was likely to go to the police. I sincerely hoped not, now that Kenneth and I were too far involved in this to get out easily. But I would need to talk to them about Stephen, too.