Chapter 15 #2
I had no utopic visions or expectations for the wonders of Winter Quarters, but the name alone was soothing in the heat and far more appealing than wayfaring in the wilderness.
That alone enticed me to keep moving despite disliking the idea of encountering even more plantation people or more Mississippi Mormons.
Seeing Lovie dozing and the children listless with heat, I prayed for the safety of my family when we encountered the folks in Winter Quarters.
Another traveling day was spent, only to arrive at Winter Quarters’ paradise that was no longer their divinely anticipated oasis. It was a ghost town. Abandoned. Void of Mississippi, or any other, Mormons.
Hundreds of crudely constructed log cabins, a church, a mill, and school stood beneath the sweltering sun as if emptied by an all-consuming plague.
There were no plantation people praising one God and speaking one Mormonistic language.
No brother this, or sister that. No ecstatic welcome or delighting in each other’s presence and carrying on.
Winter Quarters was little more than a rough, forsaken settlement.
All sat within the vacated but safe confines of blockhouses and stockades designed to provide protection from the “enemy” whose very land Brigham Young leased with the aid of United States Indian Agents.
“What in the blazing tarnation happened?” Mister Jessup’s voice shook with indignation.
“Must be the work of those damn savages!” He cursed the Omaha and Potawatomi tribes from the east to the west, labeling them every vile name under heaven.
When he finished and caught his breath, he lifted his face and prayed, calling down brimstone on all involved in such betrayal.
I watched him slouch away after praying a loathsome prayer, face reddened with rage, wounded beyond his wife’s consolation.
I remained near the top of a long row of cabins, unsure what to do.
“Zinnie! Ella! Lovie! Look to see if anything was left behind that we can use. Get on with you!” Miss Norene barked as if hell had deprived her of something she was due.
“Yes, ma’am.” I moved forward, only to jump out of the roadway as Master Ryland came barreling through on his silver-eyed beast he’d refused to sell, despite Mister Carter suggesting he do so to purchase a more sensible animal prior to embarking on this pilgrimage.
“This was posted outside the church!” He dismounted and rushed towards the plantation people clustered in the middle of the road like motherless, lost, and forlorn chickens.
“What is it?”
He thrust the yellowed, tattered paper into Mister Carter’s hand.
Probably so he don’t have to stumble over reading it.
I stood with Ella and Lovie, eyes lowered as if reading the dry earth as Mister Carter read aloud the missive confirming the closure of Winter Quarters by the U.S. Government.
“Hold on now!” He held up a silencing hand as his comrades began grumbling. Even Mister Jessup reversed his departure to hear what was being said. “The government’s lease on the land expired two months ago in May. Winter Quarters has been closed ever since.”
“I knew it was those bloody Indians!”
“No, now, in all fairness Winter Quarters was only meant to be temporary, and Brother Brigham knew the land was theirs and would return to them. Thankfully he had the foresight to set up a new headquarters,” he paused to consult the paper, “over in Kanesville.”
“And where is that exactly?” Miss Carter demanded of her husband.
“Twelve miles east. In Iowa. On the opposite bank of the Missouri River.”
It might as well have been Judgment Day with wailing and gnashing of teeth for all the ruckus those folks created.
Not that I didn’t feel the same. The journey had been beyond draining.
Twelve miles in blistering heat in the opposite direction sounded as appetizing as sour grits and gravy on a rainy Thursday.
Master Ryland spat on the ground, angrily. “Why weren’t we notified Winter Quarters was closing?”
Mister Carter passed a leathery hand over his sunburned, balding head. “We were all well aware it was temporary—”
Mister Jessup interrupted. “What about the plans to extend it to the end of the year?”
Mister Carter’s brow wrinkled in irritation. “Clearly, that didn’t happen. The Council does its best to disseminate word of new developments as quickly as they can. Even if word was sent how would we have gotten it while traveling?”
“Trading posts have been so sporadic,” Miss Carter added as if her husband needed her defense, “and not exactly friendly to our cause. Any one of them may have known and withheld the information as some supremely un-funny joke.”
“Perhaps, but, brothers and sisters, we will not be discouraged,” Mister Jessup insisted.
“Winter Quarters may no longer be here, but that won’t prevent us from getting to Salt Lake Valley and the safe place God has provided.
It only means we won’t experience this majestic respite with other kingdom brothers and sisters. ”
“And that we’ll have to restrict supplies until we can trade again at the next post,” Miss Carter added.
“I sent my gals to look around and see if anything useful may have been left behind.”
“Bless you, Sister Norene. Mine can do likewise,” Miss Jessup cosigned.
“Zinnie! Why’re you standing there like a lump on a log? Be about my business! And put down that dreaded stick. You’re no shepherd.”
Either I’d gotten caught up listening to the details of this newest development or the sun had bruised my brain for me to be still standing, doing nothing.
Offering Miss Norene a quick apology, I leaned my staff against the cart and hurried away with Hattie asleep on my back to find Ella and Lovie scrounging through empty cabins hoping to find useful things.
Pot shards. Broken tools. A cornhusk mattress that had become a rodents’ nest. Other than the forgotten tin plate or scattered kindling wood there was little worth collecting.
Prior occupants had been vigilant about not leaving food behind, probably knowing they’d need it for the voyage west to stay alive.
“Just a bunch of nothing,” Ella groused, kicking a three-legged stool missing one leg that lay abandoned on a long dirt road flanked by cabins. “Miss Norene’s gonna have a fit that we didn’t find nothing.”
“Oh well. We have what we have. Let her make do same as we’ve always done.” I fanned the unmoving air, wishing there was a breeze, grateful my Hattie had finally fallen asleep. She’d been restless, fussy in all this heat. Made me believe she was on her way to teething.
“We know how to live with less ‘cause we’ve never had plenty.”
I turned to Ella to second her sentiments except something unseen snared my attention, sending an eerie feeling skittering across my skin. “Y’all hear that?”
I scanned a nearby copse of trees as Lovie matched my whisper. “No. Whatchu hearing?”
“Silence. Absolutely nothing.”
Cicadas were quiet. Birds failed to sing. The world had gone still as if sound didn’t exist.
I wish I had my walking stick.
I had a sudden need for something solid. A defense.
Lifting my hat brim, I scoped the trees bordering the end of the lane and saw nothing. There was only stillness. And a presence. Unseen but sensed.
I grabbed Lovie and Ella. “We’re going back the way we came!”
Sound suddenly erupted and resumed as Master Ryland and Mister Peterson came galloping down the lane with the latter spewing disappointment in the settlement’s closure. “What if that Missouri sheriff sent word about my runaway wench and no one was here to receive it?”
“Brother, have faith. Even if she made it to a free state God will handle it.”
Dearest God, the only thing that needs handling is Alretha’s freedom.
I looked behind us after their voices faded in the distance. All was as it should be with birds chirping sparingly in summer’s heat. Nothing was visibly amiss. Yet the sense that someone or something was watching couldn’t be dismissed.
I questioned my senses until seeing a slight movement.
Perhaps it was the sun. Or Mister Peterson’s distress. But a flash of a color left me breathless and pulling Lovie and Ella along despite their protests. I made no mention of a nonsensical premonition that it was Alretha hidden amid the trees.
Winter Quarters became home that week as we fished, foraged, hunted, and rested the animals to prepare for the next leg of the journey.
Plantation people took refuge in the abandoned cabins while we slept outdoors in oppressive heat and played witness to their belated Independence Day.
Having been on the trail on the fourth of July, their celebration was delayed but no less boisterous as they danced like frenzied demons to Buck’s flute and a man from the Carter contingent plucking banjo strings.
There was excess. Song. Dance. But drink “only in moderation.” Moderation was always most dangerous, too often giving rise to late night summons that required shuttering my mind in cotton-like clouds that cushioned futile dreams of vengeance.
That night proved only slightly different in that it was Mister Peterson who came for me. Not Master Ryland.
“Fill the canteens first. Then the buckets.” It wasn’t intentional, my snapping at the children as we refilled water containers at the stream the next morning.
My night had been intruded upon by someone else’s needs.
So too my life. I’d been handed out to a man to whom I was not a wife.
It didn’t matter that I was not in his household.
He was white. Male. And had, for whatever vile reasons, Master Ryland’s consent.
Vulnerability left my heart raw, a gaping wound. I was furious.
I should’ve gone with Alretha!
I hadn’t known her plan and wasn’t included. Yet the notion of escape titillated and enticed me, soothed my seething.
“Mama, can you teach us to swim?” Annabelle’s question shifted my rumination.
“Ooo, yeah, Aunt Zinnie! That way you won’t have to worry if Abigail slips in another river.”