“Spirits, Mr. Bass,” Young interrupted. “Like the Holy Spirit that will enter your bosom and seize your heart with a fire of unquenchable flame.”
“Hoo-doos or spirits … no matter what you call ’em … that sort of thing may give a man like you … the willies an’ shakes … but such ghosty doin’s don’t make no nevermind … to the peoples out here … out to these here mountains … the red folks ain’t the kind to preach an’ push … what they have in their heart … push it on me the way you preachers push … a man’s medeecin is his medeecin … so who the blazes am I … to make so little of what another man carries … in his heart … who the hell am I to say … what makes him a man? … or to say I’m a man … an’ he ain’t?”
“I’ve attempted to explain to you where the Lamanites have been judged wrong, where the Indians, the cursed ones of this continent, came from and how God turned His face from them because they turned their faces from His true word,” Young said impatiently as he stepped around the side of the anvil to gaze directly into the trapper’s face. “The Indian believes in the sanctity of his beliefs about his world because he is in a state of ignorance—he knows not the word of God, Mr. Bass. Be careful, very careful, you do not covet the ignorance of these savages, or you are a heathen yourself, destined for the pit of fire. The reason these heathens can’t spread the healing power of their teaching is because they have no knowledge of the one true God.”
Scratch slammed the hammer down on the red-hot iron with a vengeance. “Their God is the same as yours, Preacher.”
Young’s face brightened with that benevolent smile that made Bass realize the Prophet believed he was ministering unto a lesser man, one who was every bit as ignorant as a heathen Indian, totally unworthy of salvation for the color of his skin.
“No,” the Prophet argued, “the spirits of these Indians are not the same as the one true Creator. These red savages live in a state of ignorance, for there will be no happy hunting ground for them when they die without the salvation of the word.”
From the corner of Scratch’s eye, the old trapper spotted his wife step from the open doorway of the store and stop against the building, then slowly settle to the half-log bench propped against the cabin wall. Waits-by-the-Water smiled at him, then closed her eyes and turned her face up to the warming sun. Apparently very much at peace.
Turning back to Brigham Young, he asked, “Your God an angry God, Preacher?”
For a moment, Young appeared to heft his thoughts around like a carpenter might take the measure of the grain in a piece of wood. “Yes, at times He can be an angry, vengeful God. When He alone determines He will smite the unrighteous—”
“What of all them sinners back to Missouri?” Titus asked as he continued to hammer on those last few inches of iron. “Other places too … where the folks riz up … an’ throwed you Marmons out? Why didn’t your God … smite them Gentiles … why did your God … make it so hard on your people?”
That question startled the Prophet. He quickly glanced at those followers around him with a look that Titus figured was Young’s wondering if any of them had explained the story of their years of travail to this ignorant Gentile.
“It is not for a man to know the inner workings of the heart of God, Mr. Bass,” he finally answered. “I suppose it will all be revealed to us in due time.”
“Maybeso, not in your lifetime?”
Young finally nodded. “Perhaps not in my lifetime, yes. But just as Moses led his Israelites to the Promised Land but could not cross over, this might not be revealed to me before I close my eyes and take my final breath … then stand at the foot of the throne of God, when all things will finally be revealed to me.”
Titus sighed, “Some things just meant to be a … a mystery, Preacher.”
“Mystery, you say?”
In the tongs Bass held up the small hoop of iron that had lost all its crimson glow. Suspended between the two of them. The anointed Prophet and the dirt-ignorant old trapper. “Most ever’ kind of folk I come to know out here—man, an’ woman too—they figger what they can’t wrap their minds around ain’t for ’em to unnerstand.”
“But God has clearly shown mankind that He wants us to understand.”
“Where’s this hoop start, Preacher?”
“Why—clearly at the end you curved in.”
“Did your own hoop start when you was born?”
“My … hoop?” he asked with the sort of smile one would wear when answering the questions of a young child.
For a moment Scratch considered how best to explain that simple concept to this self-assured preacher. “The long journey your own spirit takes—ain’t it like a hoop? You’re born, live your life good as you can, then you die. So did your own hoop start when you was born?”
Young cleared his throat and reflected. “Certainly … no, it didn’t. My spirit yearned for a place among God’s faithful and chosen people at this very time in history.”
“You’re saying you was somewhere else on this hoop when you was born?”
“I don’t understand your point, Mr. Bass—”
“An’ where will you be on the hoop when you die and stand before the throne of your God?”
It was indeed a hot midsummer day—nonetheless the Prophet’s brow was sweating a little too much for a man who was doing nothing to physically exert himself.
Titus asked again, holding the iron band slightly higher, “Where will you be?”
“When I die I will be in heaven with all God’s faithful saints. Right where you can be if you accept His revealed word.”
“So you do got a beginning and an end, Preacher?”
“As do all God’s creatures.”
“Me too? A ignernt Gentile like me?”
“Yes.”
Bass lowered the hoop. “How ’bout my Injun wife and our young’uns?”
“Yes, they have a glorious end in paradise once they accept the teachings of God.” Young smiled again, as if beginning to feel more at ease.
“You take this here circle,” Titus began, gazing at that iron hoop, “why, this here’s my life, preacher. Just like my coming out here to the mountains was a part of the journey. No beginning an’ no end.”
“But in death—”
“When I die, my body goes back to the earth, don’t it?”
“That’s the way of all mortal clay, yes.”
“But my spirit goes on,” he said quietly. “Like the earth and sky. That don’t die, does it, Preacher?”
Young corrected, “Your soul goes to live with God in His heavenly paradise prepared for us.”
“I don’t want my soul—my spirit—to go nowhere,” he said with grave intensity. “I want it to stay right here where I been the happiest I ever could be.”
“There’s far more happiness in heaven with the rest of the faithful souls—”
“Maybe for you an’ your Saints, but for me I don’t wanna be nowhere but here with these rocks and sky, here with the ones I hold in my heart. There ain’t no other heaven, no other paradise for me to be in for all time.”
“I … see,” Young stated, then dragged a single fingertip along his upper lip beaded with tiny diamonds of sweat. “Elders—we see how the Holy Spirit can only speak to a man if his ears are not plugged.”
“It ain’t that my ears are plugged,” Titus replied. “I s’pose I just hear a differ’nt voice than you heard, Preacher.”