Yet, even while there had been no fire in the heavens for the past nine nights, there was no mistaking the flames in Brigham Young’s eyes as he gazed into the distance and caught sight of something to make his case to the faithful.
“There, Mr. Bass,” the Prophet declared as he pointed up the valley. “Behold—there is your pillar of cloud.”
With murmurs of assent and wonder, Titus looked on up the valley of Black’s Fork. A thin column of woodsmoke arose from the direction of Fort Bridger. A cold chill tumbled down his spine, so cold and shocking it reminded him of stepping into a beaver pond in spring, cracking a thin layer of ice with his moccasins as he waded in to his crotch, numbing everything from his waist down. He looked again at Brigham Young, at the Prophet’s faithful, who were pointing and muttering in agreement that they were indeed seeing the pillar of cloud God had put before them, leading them onward to their Promised Land.
Chimney smoke.
Titus wagged his head and put heels to his horse. As the big red pony loped toward Fort Bridger, the old man did his best to pray that the Prophet and his chosen few would soon spot more woodsmoke to continue them on their way, to lead them far from the valley of Black’s Fork, to take their kind on to a distant kingdom of their own … so they could not possibly lay waste to the simple, earthly dreams of his old friend, Jim Bridger.
“Think of the trade my flock can offer you and Major Bridger as we bring the Saints through this wilderness to Zion, marching those thousands right past your gates!” extolled the Prophet.
Bass’s heavy hammer clanged against the short, glowing strip of band iron one last time, a splatter of crimson fireflies spewing from the anvil, a few of them snuffing themselves out on his grimy, cinder-stained moccasins. Bass laid the hammer on top of the stump where the anvil was perched and dragged the reddish strap of iron to the bucket with a pair of long, leather-wrapped tongs. As the crimson metal sissssed into the bubbling water, Titus dragged the back of his right forearm over his eyes, smearing beads of moisture and blackened cinders across the top half of his face. Droplets of sweat had begun to sting his eyes already irritated by the thick smoke. No matter that he couldn’t see with the left, both eyes still burned fiercely as he worked over fire and iron, flame and muscle.
“Jim’s gonna be some pleased with that,” he sighed, wishing the Saints would turn away and leave him to his work.
“Our migration to Zion should more than guarantee Major Bridger a handsome profit for a short season’s work,” Young continued, his thumbs hooked in the top pockets of his vest. “Those Gentiles going on to … the emigrants going on to Oregon or perhaps to California will only be the sauce for what income you can make from our faithful.”
He dragged the iron from the bucket with those tongs, turning the wide hub band this way, then that, inspecting it closely before he stepped over to the fire hopper and began hauling down on the long bellows handle he had repaired just this morning, bringing his coals to full heat. As he yanked down again and again in rhythm with his heartbeat, Scratch let his eyes bounce from man to man to man, across all eight of those who had followed Brigham Young to this shady corner of the post, all of them standing there like a broad-shouldered, multiheaded shadow, having tagged along behind their leader, hanging on his every word, whim, and need, as if Young’s every utterance was the very breath of God itself.
“What’s this Gen-tile?” he asked as the coals began to glow anew with the infusion of air.
Young cleared his throat. “A Gentile is a non-Mormon. One who has not yet come to the faith that will save him everlasting.”
“Me? I’m a Gentile?”
“What faith are you, Mr. Bass?”
“I don’t figger there’s a name I can rightly put on it.”
“Were you raised up with any church teaching?”
“My ma, she tried hard,” Titus explained. “With me an’ her other young’uns. But I s’pose your kind would call her a Gentile—no matter that she was as good an’ God-fearin’ a woman as ever walked this earth.”
“I would never mean to give offense—”
“Much as she tried to get the Bible into my head an’ part o’ my heart,” Bass continued without waiting for Young to finish, “I fell into the life what snared most boys I knowed on the frontier, snared ’em same as me. Whiskey an’ wimmens. Bad whiskey and even badder wimmens.”
He liked watching how those temporal, carnal words landed on their ears: the averted eyes, the downturned faces, as each man did his best to stare at the ground; a few gazed upward as if asking for heaven to cast its gloried benevolence on this pagan sinner, perhaps even asking for a thunderbolt to be sent from above to strike down this blasphemer.
“Even Mary, the mother of Christ Jesus, was an apostate from the true church,” Young instructed. “She herself was not redeemed by the blood of her son.”
“He was the one they nailed on the cross, weren’t he?”
With a smile, the Prophet nodded. “Yes. The Christ Jesus, who married the two Marys and Martha too before He was betrayed and crucified … married all three, whereby He could sow His seed before He ascended to the right hand of God.”
“My mam didn’t ever teach me Jesus was married afore,” Bass admitted as he studied the iron band again. “Havin’ three wives, hmmm—sounds to me like you’re saying Jesus wasn’t satisfied to be with just one woman.”
“Do you doubt that Christ Jesus married the three?”
He shrugged and replied, “I don’t know enough ’bout anything to answer your questions. I’m just a simple man who manages to sin a lot—”
“What sin was once in a man’s heart is of no bearing to God,” Brigham Young replied. “And therefore of no bearing to me. It’s what a man decides to become that marks him for the Lord’s work—”
“It ain’t a case of what I’ll become, you best unnerstand. It’s what I am that I’ll allays be.”
The Prophet took a step closer, holding out his hands before him, palms up. “Look at these hands, Mr. Bass. Once these were the hands of a carpenter. I too was a simple man with the hands of a carpenter.” He looked up from staring at his palms. “Did you know Jesus was a carpenter Himself?”
“Before you say He married them three women?”
“Christ Jesus—the Savior who came to the New World after He was crucified,” Young extolled. “He appeared to God’s chosen to tell them how all others in the land of Old Israel had forsaken Him and His promise. So Jesus left them with a new promise, and that word is told in our holy book. How Adam was God, conceived on the great star of Kolob, the site for the conception of all the gods. The most amazing story of all is told in our book, Mr. Bass.”
He wagged his head and turned back to the coals, dragging the iron strip out of the fire again and looping its crescent over the end of the anvil. “I don’t read much. Ain’t since I come out here.”
“One of the Apostles could read some of the holy book to you—”
“I got work to do.”
But Young was not easily deterred. “While you continue with your work.”
“I’m too old—”
“No man should deny himself a chance at eternal life, especially when he grows long in the tooth, Mr. Bass.”
He picked up the hammer and gave the red-hot crescent a slam, sparks sputtering from the anvil. “I am what I am, Preacher. I see what I see, an’ I hear what I hear. No man can see or hear for me.”
“But you can see the truth, hear the truth of our word, and judge for yourself as the many who have already made a stand for the new nation of Israel.”
Again and again his hammer rang against the crimson metal he inched around the anvil, slowly tightening the crescent into a solid circle the size he would need to work onto a wagon’s wheel hub. “I been out here since twenty-five …” and the hammer rang. “I seen things with my own eyes …” that hammer rang again. “Things I’d never dreamed … back east … heard an’ smelled an’ felt … all manner of things out here … things what wasn’t really there … they’s called ghosts … or shades … or hoo-doos—”