I, NEPHI…
by
k m mittan
CRK BOOKS
Salt Lake City, Utah
This book is dedicated to the man who inspired it:
Nephi Moulton, homesteader, rancher and prankster extraordinaire.
Copyright © 2011 by k m mittan
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by
CRK BOOKS, Salt Lake City, Utah.
No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission of author.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To Chris, Pam, Mary Ann, Mike, Sue and Steve for your patience in reading and critiquing this book.
To Micky, Leelee, Spence, Rich, and Everett for your unfailing support and encouragement.
To Russ and David for your conviction that my story merited printing.
To Christopher, for your invaluable technical support. Without you, this book would have never happened. And my eternal gratitude to you and Micky, both, for a beautiful cover.
Most of all, to the pioneers and old-timers of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, whose stories nagged at me until I had to write them down: Nephi, Alma, John, T.A., Wally, Mose, Jim McInelly—thank you for the memories. You are gone but not forgotten. May you rest in peace.
Polygamist Joseph Moulton’s Families
Joseph (1845 - 1935) with Lizzie, his first wife
Mary Elizabeth Giles (Lizzie)
(1852 – 1932)
Married Dec. 15, 1868
Lizzie’s Children
Sarah - 1869-1942
Joseph - 1871-1968
Thomas - 1872-1944
George - 1874-1882
Charles - 1876-1967
John - 1878-1973
Alma - 1880-1911
Nephi - 1883-1966
(pronounced Knee-fie)
Malinda - 1885-1946
Annie Katrina Jensen (3) Jensine Marie Jensen (Mary)
(1857 – 1950) (1859 – 1932)
md. Feb. 28, 1876 md. Feb. 28, 1876
(div. before 1900)
Annie’s children Mary’s children
Elizabeth 1877-1883 Josie 1877-1964
Joseph 1880-1881 Joseph 1878-1879
Lyman 1881-1959 William 1880-1956
Lillian 1884-1975 Sarah Amelia 1882-1912
Violet 1888-1978 Chase 1884-1958
Heber 1889-1891 Franz 1887-1979
Lyle 1889-1978
Thomas 1892-1979
I, NEPHI…
CHAPTER ONE
1901
HEBER CITY, UTAH
I don’t know where my father wandered off to that bright October morning but he sure wasn’t where he belonged at the head of our dining room table. All that even brought him to mind was the ancient tintype hanging on the plaster wall behind his empty chair. The photo showed him, a teenaged militia scout during the Blackhawk Indian war, standing guard outside the Heber City fort, musket in his hands, his body at stiff attention, his face fearless. I had no idea as I glanced at the likeness on Mother’s wall how the memory of that photograph would later change the direction of my life.
“Glad he isn’t here,” I muttered but I said it quiet enough my mother couldn’t hear me. The way she sat at our breakfast table, ramrod rigid, told me he was probably over at her nemesis’ house on second west—the home of his plural wife, Annie.
Mother didn’t say anything about his absence, though. My brothers and sister were carefully avoiding the topic and I, for darned sure, wasn’t going to poke my mother’s sore spot. Nineteen years of being Nephi Moulton, the youngest son in Joseph and Lizzie Moulton’s family, said there were enough things that could come along and ruin a perfectly good day, I didn’t need to help them any.
I never guessed, as we sat around the breakfast table that my next-older brother, Alma, was fixing to turn the day upside down anyway. So I was busy entertaining myself.
My younger sister, Malinda, had braided a ribbon in her dark, hip-length hair, finishing it off with a bow at the end of her braid. And that end was laying on the seat of her wooden chair.
Now what self-respecting young American male would just leave it laying there? Not me. While my brother, John, droned out his typically endless blessing on the food, I slowly slid my right hand off my lap and over behind her braid. It wasn’t hard to untie the bow. I didn’t even have to open my eyes and look. I just had to make sure she didn’t notice any tugging on her hair.
Of course re-tying the ribbon around the chair’s hip rest was a tad more of a challenge but I’d done it to her so many times I was pretty good at one-handedly making hair ribbons secure around things they weren’t designed to be secure around.
That left Mother to be reckoned with. I opened one eye just wide enough to peek. She was reverently deep in prayer so I was safe. I bowed my head, the picture of virtuous piety. By the time Mother said “Amen” and looked around the table, she probably saw a halo around my head.
I was innocently waiting for Lindy to lean forward and find herself tethered when Mother spoke.
“Boys,” she said, “your father wants you to take the team and wagon to the aspen patch and get a load of wood for Annie. Your dinner is in a flour sack out in the kitchen,” Mother’s tone was even as she passed a plate of pancakes to Charlie.
I glanced at my mother. Her oval face, framed by graying, light brown hair secured neatly in a bun at the nape of her neck, appeared calm. The dark blue fabric of her high-necked dress brought out the vivid blue of her eyes. Everything about her seemed normal except that her left eye was twitching—a sure sign she was tense about something.
It wasn’t the most thoughtful Order of the Day for Father to expect Mother to pass along, but then ‘thoughtful’ wasn’t among the adjectives that normally came to mind when I thought of my father, either. I think everyone stiffened, involuntarily, when Mother had to forward his orders. I know I did. And it was clear, just by the words she used, who the order was meant for.
Only five of Mother’s children still lived at home—spastic Charlie with his perpetually tousled hair and rumpled clothing; dapper John who always did everything right; Alma, who was my best friend; then me, Nephi—with our sister, Malinda, at tag end.
Except for Charlie, her sons were all tall, sturdy men accustomed to hard work, but when Mother said, ‘Boys, your father wants...’, she meant Alma and me. John owned his own farm and Charlie . . . well, he was just Charlie.
This time he grunted deep in his throat, grimacing as he struggled to get enough air through his vocal chords to make a sound. It finally came out in a barely-discernable, raspy whisper. “mmme, too?” His face looked hopeful and his right arm jerked, nearly knocking the syrup pitcher off the table. At the same time his left foot landed a sharp blow to my shin. I knew he really wanted to go with us because he jerked and twitched like that any time he felt intense about something.
“Charlie, I was counting on your help today.” John said, as he caught the syrup pitcher before it spilled on Mother’s bleached-white tablecloth. Making it look like something he’d planned to do all along, he poured a little puddle on his already sodden pancake before explaining, “I have a stretch of fence to fix between Father’s farm and mine.”
Charlie looked crestfallen, but he nodded. Bless John for his tact. The last thing Alma and I need today, or any other day, is our spastic brother turned loose with an axe. It was at that moment, when my attention was focused elsewhere, that Alma dropped the bomb that totally changed my life.
“Mother,” he said as he slid a fried egg and several pieces of thick bacon off a platter and onto his plate before passing the platter to me, “I’ll get this winter’s firewood for Annie but it’s the last time. It’s her own son’s job. Lyman should be taking care of his mother and I’m tired of doing his work for him. Come spring I’m going out homesteading.”
I dropped my fork, Malinda gasped, and John and Charlie reared up, paying attention. Only Mother seemed unaffected, acting as if her sons announced their independence every day of the year. I saw something flicker across her face but it was too quickly gone to figure out. Then, after a couple of eye twitches, her normal composure returned.
“Where do you plan to go?” Her soft alto voice was calm.
“Probably up north somewhere.” Alma cut a piece of his bacon with the side of his fork, rocking the tines up and down, making enough of a business of it that he didn’t have to look anyone in the eye. His wavy deep brown hair, cleanly parted down the center of his head but, as usual, flipping up in wayward wings at his temples; his clean-shaven, pleasant face with its startlingly blue eyes, straight nose and wide, rounded chin; and his dark grey pants and shirt were all spotlessly clean. Except for his rough work clothes and heavily callused hands, he could have passed as a banker or a shopkeeper instead of a farmer.
“I want to be far enough away that no one can expect me to come running when Lyman’s too lazy to get his work done,” he continued. ‘No one’ meant Father, of course, only he wasn’t saying so.
I held my breath, waiting for Mother to speak but she just gave him a long, thoughtful, wordless stare.
What was she thinking? What would she say?
From the corner of my eye, I could see Malinda’s slender hands reach under the table to play with the end of her braid, anxiety stamped on her normally-pretty face. What a time for me to have played my favorite trick on her! But I don’t think she even thought about it as she untied the ribbon and started twirling the end of her hair. She was too upset. Across the table Charlie gaped and even John, for once in his life, was speechless.
The longer the silence lasted, the more stifling it became until I could feel it, like a vise, squeezing my chest so tight I could scarcely breathe.
She can’t just let him go. . . . Can she?
It wasn’t the extra work that bothered me. I could do Alma’s chores as well as my own and barely break a sweat. If he leaves, who will talk for me? All my life if I wanted to know something he didn’t have the answer to, Alma’d waltz up to the closest adult and start asking questions. His tongue wasn’t an ice block around outsiders.
And that wasn’t my only problem. I was old enough that pretty soon my parents would start dropping hints. “Those Morgan girls sure are growing up to be a good-looking bunch,” my father might say or, “When I was visiting Sally Jones today, her Becky served a cherry pie she’d just taken from the oven. My land but that girl can bake!” from Mother.
I’d watched them maneuver my older siblings toward marriage and snickered when my sister Sarah tied the knot. I was still a kid, then, and the way she suckered to their manipulations was funny. But by the time Joe and Tom fell into the chains of matrimony, I was older, wiser, and the process was starting to make me nervous. Now John had a cabin half built on his farm with Suzie McDonald’s heart chained to it and Alma was making an idiot out of himself, trying to convince Maude Johnson he was the brightest star in her night sky. John wasn’t married yet and Maude hadn’t committed to anything so I’d felt marginally safe.
Marginally.
…But if Alma left town….
The minute he was gone my parents would be all over me like tom cats on a fence rail at midnight. Next thing I knew, Mother’d have me all gussied up like little Lord Fauntleroy. Then she’d drag me along while she paid social calls on the mothers of every eligible girl in the entire county. A trickle of cold sweat formed at the base of my neck and rolled slowly, relentlessly, down my back. What can I do? How can I get out of this?
“Nephi,” Mother said, abruptly shifting her gaze to me, “If you stay here, you’ll be doing the chores for everybody, all by yourself. Lyman’s an adult. It’s time he took responsibility for his mother and little sisters. You need to go with Alma.”
I was so stunned all I could do was gape. John, Charlie and Malinda looked just as shocked. Me go with Alma? Was she serious?
“I hoped you’d let him come,” Alma leaned back in his chair, smiling his satisfaction.
“Actually,” Mother said, “it’s not his choice. I’m sending him—and I’ll expect you two to get along. Not that I’d worry about that, anyway, but just so you know—.”
“Mother, you can’t mean it!” Malinda cried, twirling the end of her braid in even tighter circles. “How could we manage without Nephi? It’s impossible!”
“Yes, I do mean it, Lindy,” Mother’s tone plainly said, ‘No arguments allowed’. “It’s high time your father took care of us. And Charlie will help him.. Besides, Nephi’s nineteen now and he’s old enough he should be out on his own. He’s been Annie’s little slave long enough.”
So there it was.
Because Mother didn’t like me helping Annie, she was handing me a future beyond my wildest dreams—homesteading with Alma somewhere off by ourselves! If I hadn’t known my mother as well as I did, I wouldn’t have believed it. But I did know Mother and once she made up her mind about something, she wasn’t much for changing it. Alma and I were as good as gone, already.
I was grinning like a fool and I wanted to jump, yell, dance a jig.
“Alma, we’d better get out to the aspen patch,” I said, pushing my chair back from the table. “The day isn’t getting any younger.”
But Mother was too quick.
“Not so fast, young man,” she ordered. “You just sit right back down there and finish your breakfast. A venture like this takes a lot of serious consideration and planning. You’re not going off half-cocked, now or next spring, and you’re not moving out of my home until I know you have all your ducks lined up.”
I groaned. Having your ‘ducks lined up’ was one of Mother’s favorite sayings when she meant something had to be thoroughly Planned-And-Pre-Pared-For. Besides that, when she called me ‘young man’ I knew better than to cross her. Quiet and mild as she normally was, my mother could be a wildcat when she thought it was warranted. I wasn’t anxious to create a warrant.
...But planning and lining ducks up? That meant handwriting. Lists . . . detailed lists. . . .And plans. She’d see to it that we didn’t step a foot out of her door next spring until we were Pre-Pared.
“You aren’t stepping a foot out of my door next spring unless you’re prepared,” she added, looking straight at me.
I knew it—and I knew she meant every word of it, too. Before we left, she’d tear every plan we made apart just to make sure we’d dotted every i and crossed every t. I sighed as I sat back down.
I hated planning—what’s the purpose, anyway? If there’s a job to do, just go do it!—And anything involving handwriting was even worse. John, whose penmanship always flowed perfectly in even, straight lines across his paper, delighted in looking at my attempts and saying, “Hmmm. Looks like a chicken stuck its foot in the ink bottle and wandered around this page.” Other than marriage, there weren’t too many fates worse than death but this planning/preparation business had to come close. I groaned, again.
But I couldn’t stay dejected for very long because I knew our future was set. The grin relit my face. Even Father didn’t oppose Mother once she made up her mind about something. He couldn’t because she, as first wife, held the purse strings and had all the family property in her name.
All we have to do is keep her happy between now and the time we leave—and Alma will do the writing anyway.
Youth can be so blissfully optimistic.
CHAPTER TWO
All that autumn Alma and I poured over Mother’s Sears and Sawbucks catalog until it nearly fell apart. Every time we thought we had everything all worked out—what equipment we had to buy and what supplies we needed to take—Mother got a pencil and start adding up and crossing off.
“Did you boys even think about the kitchen utensils you’ll need?” she might say. “Go look through my cupboards. Better, still, take turns helping me fix meals—starting with you, Alma. Tomorrow morning. Five-thirty a.m. Nephi can milk the cows and feed the stock alone.”
“Aw, Mother, I hate to cook. Teach Nephi. He likes poking around in the kitchen.”
“You can’t always rely on someone else, Alma. You need to be able to take care of yourself. Starting tomorrow.”
Or, “Did you boys even think about fencing? I don’t see any wire, staples or fencing equipment on this list. Nephi, you sit down and figure out what you’ll need to fence 160 acres.”
She would make me write. And it didn’t matter how hard I tried, I never got it right, either.
“Nephi, did you think about the animals you’ll be fencing in? Can you hold a sheep with barbed wire? No. You know that. You two need to decide how many sheep you’re taking and how much pasture you’ll need for them, then refigure this.”
More writing!
She could just as easily have done it all for us—saved us a whole passel of work and mental agony trying to figure out what she’d expect—but I guess she wanted her two youngest sons to be able to Stand On Their Own, Amount To Something, and Be Successful. Or something of that ilk.
And then the sheep issue led to the question of exactly where we were going. Alma wanted to homestead and I was eager to start yesterday but we didn’t know how to tell Mother “up north” meant deep into Idaho, not closer to home in Utah. How much sheep pasture we’d need depended on where we went—whether we found a place with native grasses or scrub and sage.
Two of our uncles lived in Teton Basin, near the Wyoming border. I voted to settle near them but Alma leaned in another direction. Maude had an aunt whose husband had dragged his family to some remote spot called Rexburg, some fifty miles west of the Basin. And of course Alma wanted Maude to have family nearby when he married her. I didn’t see it at the time, though. I guess I was pretty dense because, for the life of me, I couldn’t understand what beckoned him in the Rexburg direction. We bantered back and forth about it all fall.
“I think we’ll find what we want near Rexburg . . . .” Alma might start out and I’d be up and running.
“If Rexburg is so wonderful, why didn’t the uncles settle there?” Then we’d argue about that long enough for me to steer the discussion down another avenue.
Or he might try to sneak it in with some casual comment about, “When we get to Rexburg . . .” and I’d come right back with a laughing, “Got a rock in your pocket?” or an innocent, “It sure will be good to live near our cousins again.”
I think Alma was so worried over how to tell Mother about Idaho in the first place that it never connected just how serious I was. On the other hand, I didn’t understand why he thought telling Mother was such a problem, either.
“Why are you fretting so much?” I asked him one night after we’d crawled into bed.
“You really don’t know?”
“If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking, now would I?” I said as I blew out the candle on our bedside table and settled down under Mother’s quilts.
He patiently spelled it out for me. “The major to-do will be about us settling so far away. I don’t want her to decide you can’t come after all. I’d rather homestead with you than anyone else I know, Nephi.”
I think I must have glowed enough to light up our little attic bedroom. Still, Alma’s concern made me a tad edgy, too. “Do you really think she’d make me stay here? What d’you think she’ll say?”
“Oh, you know. The usual. Why are we going so far away when we could find something around the Ogden area or maybe up in Cache Valley?”
“Cache Valley! That’s nothing but a breeding ground for mosquito bugs! And Ogden smells like dead brine shrimp whenever the wind blows. Yech!”
“Yes, but you can get good crops at either place and they’re a lot closer to home than Rexburg is. She may be willing to get us out from underfoot but she isn’t going to want us forever out of her hair. You know how Mother is with her grandchildren. She’s crazy about them. She’ll want us close enough she can get to know our little ones once we marry.”
“Speak for yourself. I’m not tying any knots!”
“I am speaking for myself. By the way, how shall we handle things after Maude and I get hitched? Will you want your own cabin?”
“Just how soon is this hitching supposed to come off?” I asked, every muscle in my body taut as a newly-stretched fence wire. “I thought our homesteading was just the two of us.” I didn’t like the sound of that ‘hitch’ word one bit.
“Oh, not for a few years, at least, so you can relax.” Alma chuckled. “Our place will have to produce well before I bring her up.”
Good thing we were homesteading instead of buying a farm. If Alma was determined to marry, I supposed Maude was as good a choice as any and a darned sight easier on the eyes than most. But the idea of sharing my brother with a meddlesome, talkative female was unsettling. And outside of my own immediate relatives, ‘meddlesome’ and ‘talkative’ fit every woman I knew.
Personally, I preferred silence. Which was probably why I got along so well with Alma in the first place. With him around I could hear meadowlarks of a morning because once we’d discussed what needed to be done, we shut up and got busy. And stayed that way. Stick a yapping female in the middle of our twosome and I could see the leaves on the shade trees of heaven wither and fall. It could end up hotter'n hades on our little spread. I wanted to tell him so but I knew he wasn’t in the mood to listen.
“You can have your own cabin to honeymoon in,” I said, shortly. “I don't want the patter of little feet waking me when I want to sleep in, mornings.”
I could hear a grin in Alma’s voice. “Well, that’s settled,” he said with obvious satisfaction, “although I happen to know you never sleep in and little feet aren’t likely to wake you, either. You sleep like the dead. There wouldn’t be any little feet for a while, anyway. But that’s ok with me. Newlyweds need their privacy.”
So would I. Away from females. Thoughts of how to keep our homestead productive enough for two but not for three, teased the edges of my thoughts until settling the issue of exactly where we were going to homestead took precedence.
I still wanted to be near our uncles in Teton Basin. I preferred Uncle Charles over Uncle George because Uncle Charles had sons about my age but it really didn’t matter to me where we settled as long as we were close to them.
CHAPTER THREE
“Mother’s hounding me for our plans,” Alma told me one evening while we milked Father’s cows. “Look, Nephi. I know you don’t like social affairs but we really don’t know that much about the Rexburg area and . . . .”
“We know where our uncles are. That’s good enough for me.”
“If you’re going to make an intelligent decision you need to look at all the facts.”
“Want me to take a trip? Don’t have the money. Besides, it’s winter. You can’t see anything when it’s under six feet of snow. What’s the decision, anyhow? We know enough about the Basin. Seems pretty straightforward to me.”
“Yes, the uncles have talked about the Basin every time they’ve been down to visit but we haven’t talked to anyone who knows the Rexburg area. Do me a favor, Nephi. At least take the time to listen to someone who’s lived there.”
“Don’t know anybody that fits that description.”
“Maude’s uncle will be here Christmas eve. Her mother’s invited us over for dinner and some entertainment afterwards. We can talk to him then.”
What choice did I have? I didn’t plan to change my mind but I agreed to go, hoping it would get Alma off my back. With luck Maude’s uncle would tell us enough that Alma’d decide against Rexburg. Then we could get busy with our plans for the Basin. I was counting on it.
In fact, I was so confident about the outcome of our meeting that it was nearly Christmas before I realized what I’d gotten myself into.
Meeting the uncle meant being in a social setting—meeting people I didn’t know; eating in front of people I didn’t know; sitting beside people I didn’t know. How in the world did I manage to get dragged into such a predicament? The number two fate worse than death was staring me in the face, looming closer every day—waiting to pounce on me and devour me in its gaping maw. I nearly broke out in hives every time I thought about it.
The night we met Maude’s uncle was a clear, cold, moon-flooded December evening. Alma and Mother made sure I was presentable, my hair combed to perfection - “What’re you doing that for? I’m wearing a cap, aren’t I?” - and my shirt pristinely pressed - “You’re wasting your time, Mother. I’m putting on a coat so it’ll be wrinkled before I’m even out our door.” - and my tie tied correctly - “Get that thing off, Alma, it’s choking me. I am not wearing it!” By the time we started across town, I was so nervous I was almost ill.
“The minute supper’s over I’m out of there.” I said as we walked up Maude’s street.
“You can’t leave. Remember the entertainment?”
“I absolutely will not stay for it.”
“You may have to, so be prepared,” was all Alma would say.
Great!
What if I spilled soup down the front of my shirt or made embarrassing noises? What would I do? Supper was agony enough without adding Entertainment to it. I hoped, in desperation, that we’d be through talking before the production started so I could make my escape. Maybe I could suffer through the stares of Maude’s younger siblings at the table but to endure some screeching female’s version of ‘Silent Night’ afterwards would curdle everything I’d eaten. It was positively beyond the call of duty. I held my fingers crossed all the way to Maude’s door.
I may as well have not bothered. Uncle Jake was a talker. In fact he never even paused for breath as near as I could tell. He was talking when Maude showed us into her mother’s dining room (“And when the First Presidency come out and asked….”), he talked while he shoveled elk roast, gravy-smeared mashed potatoes, pickled beets and mincemeat pie into his mouth (“. . . and them Elders up in Rexburg done got together and….”), he talked in between the very infrequent chews he gave his food (“. . . if it hadn’t been fer the quilts them gals pieced together….”) and if his windpipe hadn’t been closed off when he swallowed his un-chewed food, he probably would have talked as the stuff went down. Nobody got a word in edgewise and after a couple of half-hearted attempts, nobody even tried.
By the end of the meal when Maude’s mother shepherded us into her parlor, I was near despair. I hadn’t noticed the fellow had said one single thing all night that would be of any use to Alma or me. Oh, he could spin a yarn all right, but yarns are yarns. We needed some hard facts about the Rexburg area—something that would cool Alma’s desire to settle there. …And I didn’t see how we were going to get any from him when we couldn’t get him to pause long enough for a body to even ask a question.
It wasn’t until after the Entertainment was over (Maude pounded out various Christmas pieces on their harpsichord—my head throbbed in time to the ‘music’ while Alma looked like she’d just won a prize—and her mother shrilled through ‘O Holy Night’—I thought my spine would fracture into a thousand pieces when she flatted those high notes) before Maude’s father finally got Uncle Jake to slow down enough for my brother to speak.
Alma told him we were thinking of homesteading up his way—I wondered just who was doing the thinking because I hadn’t changed my mind any—and what was his opin…. And that was all it took.
He started in on everything he knew about Rexburg, Salem, Teton, Parker, St. Anthony, Ashton, and every dot on the map in between and ended up trying to sell us a little farm on the Egin Bench near Salem. He must have had a hundred reasons why we needed to buy that particular farm instead of homesteading, and wouldn’t you know my brother suckered for every one of them?
There I was, looking around the parlor with all its garlands, Christmas bows, and candles tucked wherever there was a space between the Johnson’s gewgaws, doilies, and overstuffed furniture, pretending to ignore Uncle Jake’s youngest three brats who were trying to outdo each other in sticking their tongues out at me, and not really paying that much attention to Uncle Jake when suddenly I heard Alma exclaim, “That’s exactly what Nephi and I are looking for!”
Since we hadn’t come to an agreement of what we wanted I started paying attention. Fast!
“Sure would help the owner out,” Uncle Jake was saying. “The wife died in childbirth and he done took the baby back east to his family. Pulled out in late summer or thereabouts so nothing’s been done to the place this fall. Find yourself with a choice piece of property on your hands, though, that place. Rich, fertile soil, that Egin Bench. Crops just jump out of the earth to reach the sky and there’s a snug little cabin and a barn and corrals and the place is already fenced and ditched, and the water rights’re good—canal runs right by the front door.”
I had to admit it sounded good but I’d listened to Uncle Jake at the table and while farmers want to believe the most productive land still exists, just waiting to be snapped up, I figured this was nothing more than another one of his tales.
Besides, I was holding out for the Basin. And homesteading. How many times had we counted our hoard, anyway? There was barely enough to buy the tools and animals we needed and here Alma was talking about buying a farm?
I wanted to say what I thought. But not in Maude’s parlor. Not in front of all her family. Time to get Alma off by himself and talk some hard sense into that soft head of his.
Amazing how daft Alma’s become.
…Wait a minute!
I’m the one who’s daft. Snug cabin, barn and fences, indeed! That means less time before he’ll get himself hitched to that fresh-faced young woman sitting beside him on her mother’s settee. If I’m not careful, the next thing I know we’ll be living on the Egin bench; me in a “snug cabin” and him in a house filled to overflowing with unnecessary junk cram-jammed into every nook and cranny along with a whole passel of dirty-faced, crying urchins with extra-long tongues—and the icing on the cake will be Uncle Jake and those little brats of his coming out to Sunday dinner.
If Alma wants to homestead with me, why is he so set on bringing a woman into the mix? Women are just a pack of trouble and inconvenience.
I stewed about it until I finally got my brother pried off the settee and prodded out of Maude’s door some two hours later.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Wasn’t Maude’s home decorated nice? I really liked how her mother had the mantle covered with cedar and bows and candles.” Alma gushed like a grammar school girl as soon as we were decently out of earshot. “Did you like the candies Maude served? I thought her divinity was especially good. And that fudge—.”
“Didn’t notice!”
“Hey, what’s wrong with you?” He playfully poked me in the ribs. “Here we’ve had a wonderful evening, learned a lot about the area where we want to go, and you’re grousing?”
“Area where you want to go, you mean. I never said I wanted to go to Rexburg.”
“Wait a minute.” Alma stopped in mid-stride and turned to face me in the cold, white moonlight. “You never really came out and said you didn’t, either. What’s gotten into you, Nephi?”
That’s when I knew he hadn’t heard a word I’d said all fall.
“Where did you get the idea we could afford to buy a farm?” I said with fury. “You helped count our money. You helped price our supplies. You know good and well we don’t have enough for a farm and supplies, too. We don’t have any choice but to homestead.”
“You ever heard the word ‘borrow’? Maude’s uncle said we can count on at least two good hay crops a year—maybe three—and the farm’s going for real cheap. We can pay it off in no time and we won’t have all the work we’d have to do if we homesteaded. It’ll be more than worth it.”
“Borrow money!” I stiffened, horrified, my hands clenching involuntarily. “You’re crazy!”
“No, practical.” Alma stood firm. “Just think of the work it will save. The cabin’s built. The barn’s built. The ditches are dug and the fences are up.” He ticked them off on his gloved fingers. “Those are all absolutely necessary things that we won’t have to do ourselves. It will be worth it, Nephi. You’ll see.”
“No, I won’t. I’m not going into debt just so you can bring your sweetie pie up sooner.”
“So that’s what’s eating you. What difference does it make when I marry Maude? What do you have against her, anyhow?”
“She’s a woman and women are trouble.”
“That’s an excuse. I happen to know you don’t feel that way about Mother or our sisters, so what’s your real complaint?”
“Why are you so set on changing what we planned?” Suddenly I just had to do something. I pried my fists open wide enough to scoop up a handful of snow and crush it together into a ball, packing and repacking it as I spoke. “We had everything almost worked out but then you listen to someone who sells you a bill of goods any fool could tell is too good to be true and you don’t even think before you let him talk you into dropping everything we planned to do.”
I looked for a target. Across the street was someone’s tree, standing naked and skeletal in the thin winter moonlight. The next moment my snowball splatted against its dark trunk–a white blemish on inky blackness. I scooped up another handful of snow.
“You wanted me to homestead with you. You said you’d prefer me over anyone else. Now you want to go into debt and buy an already-proved farm just so you can bring a woman along?” I threw the new ball viciously. “It’s a ridiculous, spendthrift idea!”
Splat!
“Trouble with you is your nose is out of joint.” For once Alma wasn’t being the sympathetic brother I’d always known. In fact, his jaw was clenched and his normally pleasant blue eyes were steely. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting a wife and family and just because I’m thinking about the future doesn’t mean there’s no place for you in my plans. It’s time you grew up a little.”
“Grew up!” My hands shot into the air. “Well, that beats everything. We plan. We price. We compare. We spend weeks working everything out and then you have to ruin it all, wanting to go into debt just so you can drag some skirt along.”
“She’s not ‘some skirt’, Nephi. Her name is Maude and I’d thank you to be a little more respectful when you speak of her!” The thrust of his words was so unaccustomed it was almost a physical force. Involuntarily, I took a step backward. I didn’t remember ever hearing my placid brother speak like that. I was so shocked that if I hadn’t been so worked up, myself, I would have shut my trap right then and there. But I was too angry to stop.
“Pardon me.” I could almost taste the vinegar dripping from my tongue. “You’ve gone plumb off your rocker and changed everything we’ve planned just so you can carry your love-life, Miss Maude Johnson,” I made an elaborate bow, one arm across my stomach, the other flung out behind me, “over the threshold. Is that better?”
Alma ignored my sarcasm. “And what if I do want to bring her sooner? Why are you so against it?”
“You mean to tell me you can look at all the problems our family has had because our father wanted wives - notice the S there, that stands for plural, in more ways than one - and families - observe another S - that he never could afford or satisfy, and you can’t see the sense of staying single? Are you blind?”
“Plural is not my game, Nephi.” Although I knew he, too, was angry, his tone was even. I never could figure out how he managed to keep so calm in times of stress.
“You should know that,” he continued. “And even if it was my inclination, it’s illegal now. Besides, Father and Mother were happy before Father brought Aunt Annie and Aunt Mary home . . . .”
“Without Mother’s permission, you’ll recall.”
“I know what he did but I’d never do that to my wife. I agree with everyone else in the family that it was a pretty underhanded thing to do to Mother, to say nothing of being against Church rules. That’s beside the point, though.
“And your point is?”
“One man and one woman can make a good, happy home if they want to try.”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
“Then start noticing. Tom and Joe and Sarah are all perfectly content with their little families. Uncle Heber has always been what I’d consider the happiest of married men. John’s looking forward to marrying his Susan. There is such a thing as wedded bliss and I want my share of it. One day you’ll be mature enough to understand and when you are, you’ll want the same thing, so give it up, Nephi.”
I could ignore the gibe about my maturity but ‘give it up’?
“I’m not going to give it up, I’m not going to get married–ever—and I’m not going into debt just so you can!” With that I stomped off, leaving Alma standing alone in the frigid winter moonlight.
CHAPTER FIVE
“When are we going to talk this out?” Alma asked one night a couple of weeks later as he shivered his way between the cold flannel sheets of the double bed we shared.
“Nothing to discuss,” I said, jerking my share of Mother’s hand-stitched quilts up to my chin. “You’re not homesteading and I’m not buying a farm.”
“Well, I’d think we could compromise if we tried.”
“I’m not compromising,” I said as I turned to the wall. Alma sighed.
Being on the outs with him cut me to the quick but I wasn’t changing my mind, ever, so I said nothing. Eventually his breathing deepened as he drifted off to sleep. I laid awake, fretting.
We had everything worked out. Now nothing’s right and it’s all because of Mistress Maude. She’s created an un-crossable gulf between us.
Trust a woman! God sure messed up when he made their ilk . . . except for Mother and Sarah and Lindy, of course. And I guess my sisters-in-law aren’t so bad. Tom and Joe seem happy enough. But Maude? She’s even worse than Annie and Mary.
It didn’t bother me to resent Mary, Father’s third wife. After all, she’d divorced him. But thinking ill of his second wife, Annie, sent a twinge of guilt through me. Annie was a good woman—a lover of all children—and I was actually quite fond of her. If she’d been a true widow instead of separated from Father because of the law, I wouldn’t have minded all the chores I did for her even though they were lazy Lyman’s responsibility. Mother wouldn’t have minded either. Of that I was certain.
I thought about when Father married the two Danish sisters. He and Mother were still living in their cramped, one-roomed cabin with four small children clinging to Mother’s skirts and Charlie on the way. I could imagine my Mother, desperate for a larger home, urging Father to collect the money the Danish sisters’ step-father owed him. So off went Father.
I pictured Mother’s anticipation when my father left. She wasn’t demonstrative but I knew she loved my father. At least she did then. She probably waited at the cabin window, watching for his return, while the tantalizing smells of his favorite stew, cooking on the hearth, filled the cabin.
But he didn’t come.
Not that day. Not the next. And when he did show up, he brought a surprise that wasn’t money.
How like my father! Send him off to collect a debt so he can build something better for his wife and children to live in and does he come back with money? Not Joseph Moulton! Instead, he brings home two teenaged brides. Two more mouths to feed and no place to even house them. No wonder Charlie was born defective, Mother was that upset.
Resentment against my father boiled over—just as it always did whenever I thought of him—and I raised up, punching my pillow in irritation. I would have hit that pillow until there was nothing left but feathers flying around the room except for the sudden draft of frigid air that shot down the front of me clear to my toes. It sent me, shivering, back under our quilts.
Father. And Annie. And Mary. Homewreckers!
Again a twinge of guilt, but it only lasted an instant. I might be partial to Annie—who remained married to Father even though he no longer co-habited with her—but, still, I knew she and Mary had caused intense heartache for my mother ever since Father brought them home.
Mother never dreamed she’d have to share Father with another woman, let alone two of them. I could almost feel her despair as, struggling to care for her rapidly growing family, her hopes were dashed and without warning her meager resources and Father’s time and attention were spread between two more, very prolific, women . . . women who couldn’t even peaceably share him with each other, let alone her….
I wondered why Mother stayed married to him. She could have divorced him. He certainly deserved it. Her reasoning escaped me. It can’t be because she still loves him. I tried to think of any indication that she did love him but I saw them together so seldom—he was always off doing something for the community or the church or who knew what. About the only time I saw them together was at church on Sunday where she sat at one end of the pew and he at the other with my brothers, Lindy, and me in between.
Then I had a new thought. I wonder if the reason they sit that way is because of her resentment? After all, who could actually love a man who pulled such a dirty trick? I wouldn’t want to sit by him. I always thought they sat that way to keep us in line but maybe it’s because she refuses to be beside him any longer. It would serve him right. Is that why he’s always gone? He knows he’s not wanted?
Probably the only reason Mother stayed with him was because of the fine woman she was. She’s not a vow breaker like Mary. She doesn’t fight with Father and she won’t fight Annie—or Mary either.
But those two. Talk about typical women. Troublemakers just like all the rest. Why can’t Alma see that a woman will mess up our lives to the point we’ll be eternally miserable?
Well, if he’s determined to ruin his own life, so be it, but he’ll have to do it without me. I’m not as blind as he is. There will never be a woman—any woman—making my life miserable. With firm resolve, I finally drifted, emotionally and physically exhausted, off to sleep.
Malinda Moulton (Lindy)
CHAPTER SIX
“We’re taking out a homestead in Teton Basin, Mother.” You know how a person’s voice sometimes hangs on the air after they’ve spoken? It’s as if the words and the tones stay there, not dying away like they normally do. The sound of Alma’s deep voice and the words he said hung over our supper table just like that.
Only Mother, Alma, Lindy and I were home that night. I was so astonished at what Alma said, I nearly choked. I glanced around the table. Lindy had a decidedly smug look on her face, Mother looked so calm she could have been expecting this all along, and Alma was totally composed.
A hundred thoughts chased each other through my mind before the sound of his words died away. He hadn’t mentioned homesteading or farming for weeks—not since the night he’d suggested a compromise—and I’d buried all thoughts of leaving Heber City with him. Now, suddenly, I couldn’t keep a triumphant grin off my face. He wants me with him enough to do it my way. I should have felt guilty but I didn’t. We didn’t need Maude.
“I was expecting you to go to Idaho.” Mother dabbed at her mouth with a napkin that matched her bleached-white tablecloth, then cocked her head as she looked from Alma to me and back again. “Actually, I thought you and Nephi decided to buy out near Rexburg instead of homesteading in the Basin.”
I felt like someone punched me in the gut. “How did you know about Rexburg?”
“I have my sources,” Mother said.
Malinda giggled. “Yes, she does.” Then she laughed, “You should see the look on your face, Nephi. I can’t wait to tell the girls at school.”
“Lindy, when you get your first beau I’m going to tell him a story or two on you if you ever breathe a word of this.” Lindy was usually a jewel, but occasionally she could really annoy me. “You’re three beaus too late,” Lindy informed me, her nose in the air. I wanted to shake that smug smile right off her face. “Anyway, how do you think Mother found out about all your plans? I told her.”
“And just where did you get your information, little missy?” Alma’s eyes were wide but was it show or real? Suddenly, I wasn’t sure about anything or anybody.
“I got it from my third beau. You’ve been so busy with Maude, and Nephi’s been so moody blue lately you haven’t noticed Maude’s little brother walking me home after school.” Her Lindy-giggle bubbled up; joyous, contagious and excessively irritating. This was no time for laughter; I was trying to maintain a frown. But no matter how hard I tried, when Lindy giggled, a smile persisted in tugging at the corners of my mouth. It irritated me no end.
“I heard all about your Christmas visit with his uncle,” she continued. “You were all ears, Alma, and Nephi scowled and spent his time looking around like he wished he was a hundred miles away.”
“I sure did,” I agreed, slipping back into the mood I wanted. “What a total waste....”
“That’s not important now,” Mother interrupted in her, ‘There’ll be no more nonsense, boys’, voice. “What’s important is those finalized plans I’ve been waiting to see. …Alma?”
“Don’t have any, Mother. We’ll homestead but we haven’t worked on plans for weeks.”
“Then have you talked to anyone about the Basin? Is there land still available?”
“Mother, you aren’t serious about letting them go to Idaho! How will we manage if they’re so far away? Who will take care of us?” Large tears welled up in Lindy’s eyes. “I thought if I told on them you’d scotch the whole idea.”
Without even thinking, I slipped her my handkerchief under the table. Lindy never carried one of her own. Sharing mine was a ritual from as far back as either of us could remember.
“Well, I guess you thought wrong, young lady. Your father can take care of us, he will take care of us, and it’s high time he starts. He has Charlie for help, and Alma and Nephi need to go out on their own. Now you get busy with the dishes and then go to bed. I want to hear what your brothers agreed on before their falling out.”
She turned her attention from Malinda. “And don’t get into any silly arguments. Nephi, you get that last list you boys drew up and let’s look it over. It’s mid-February already and you don’t have your ducks lined up. If you’re to get a decent crop this summer, you need to order your supplies now so you can leave here before May.”
“Nephi’s got the list?” Alma reared back in his chair, his eyes wide.
I’d squirreled it away in the hidey-hole in our bedroom where I hid things I wanted to keep all to myself. It was the only thing I’d never shared with my brother—or anyone else, for that matter.
“He put it in his hidey-hole up in your bedroom,” Mother told him.
“What hidey-hole?” Alma asked. He looked like he’d just missed a train or something. Her words shocked me so much I was sure I had. That hidey-hole was my private place . . . or so I’d always thought. Was she bluffing?
“It’s in the corner under the eaves,” she said. She wasn’t bluffing. “He pries a board up and hides things between your floor and the ceiling in the parlor. Sometimes he even uses it when he wants to listen to company conversations but doesn’t want to be seen.”
She smiled at the look on my face. “Don’t look so dumbfounded, Nephi. I wasn’t born yesterday. I’ve known what you were doing for years. I guess, now that you’re leaving, it’s all right for me to tell.”
This time the breath was knocked clean out of me. “Since when did you know about that?” I squeaked. I was suddenly seeing a mother I knew nothing about. Sure, I’d always known she was intelligent and unusually capable, but this savvy? How had she found out when even Alma, who knew almost everything there was to know about me, hadn’t known?
The more I thought about it, the more it puzzled me. How did she find that one loose little board under the eaves in the corner of our room? How could she know I listened through it? Besides, the Johnson boy couldn’t have told Lindy everything because he wouldn’t have known about Alma’s and my disagreement. And Alma was too closemouthed to have told Maude. For a moment there was a buzzing in my ears and the room seemed to swirl around me. It only lasted for a moment, though, before Mother spoke.
“It doesn’t matter how long I’ve known. That’s not important. Now pay attention, Nephi. Go get that list and, Alma, you round up some paper and a pencil and let’s finalize those plans. I want a dollar amount on what you two have available to spend, and we’re filling out an order form from the catalog tonight.” I was so shocked by her personal knowledge of me and my habits that I obeyed her without questioning.
Which was probably what she intended all along.
CHAPTER SEVEN
It was long past midnight before my mother was satisfied with what she referred to as ‘you boys’ plans’. She probed and prodded, making us look at every aspect of homesteading and farming all over again, from every possible angle, until we were both so exhausted everything was hazy. Give me two hundred acres of rocky, hard-baked clay soil to plow behind a stubborn mule, any day, over ever having to do that again.
But finally we were finished. She had carefully tallied lists of what we needed to purchase, including household items and farming supplies she said we’d need that we hadn’t even thought about buying . . . a thirty-yard coil of hemp rope, for instance:
“What for? We have our lariats.”
“You never know, Nephi, when it’ll come in handy. You’ll need more than your lariats.” And bread pans:
“I can’t cook bread and neither can Nephi. But he makes biscuits. We’ll live on that.” “It’s bake bread, Alma, and you will learn before you leave my home.”
Then she made me, of all people, fill out the order forms. She knew I hated writing. What was the point of making me fill out the forms when someone needed to read them at the catalog house? I pointed out to her that my handwriting was always jerky, not smooth and flourishing like hers or Alma’s: