Saints by Orson Scott Card
Heber shrugged. I don't know. It's hard to tell a vision from a dream this early in the morning. If it comes true, it was a vision. Now go back to sleep."
"No. I've got to be at work in three hours. We'll have to hurry."
"It isn't morning yet."
"It's four-thirty."
"Charlie, have mercy on a man who walked from Clitheroe!"
"You can sleep all morning after I go to work. But you won't get any more rest tonight until you baptize me."
Kimball sat bolt upright, swung his legs off the bed, and began pulling on his boots. "I knew it!" he said. "I knew it, Charlie, I knew it the moment I saw you in the square. I felt it like a fire in my heart. That young man has been chosen for a great work. Did you finish the book?"
"Every page."
"It ain't exactly a short book, Charlie. You must be just about the fastest person ever to read enough of it to be converted."
As Heber put on his coat, Charlie chewed the word. Converted. Was that what had happened to him? He didn't feel any different. Just a small change, really. Just the feeling that God knew his name. Just the feeling that Old Hulme had reached out of heaven and touched him, opened up his heart and said, This is who you are, Charlie Kirkham -- now what are you going to do about it?
Charlie opened up his palms in front of him, as if waiting to have a ruler strike him sharply, wake him up and tell him what to do. But there was no stinging slap from a slender piece of wood. Just Heber Kimball's large, strong hand gripping him and pulling him to his feet. "Before we leave the house, Charlie, I figure we ought to say a prayer together." Without waiting for Charlie to agree, Heber bowed his head, still holding Charlie's hands, and said, "Lord, yesterday Charlie Kirkham was so proud and stiff- necked he wouldn't know a mule if it kicked him. Well, it looks like you kicked him hard enough to wake him up. Now give him the strength to endure the trials and temptations that Satan will put in his way, to block him from performing the mighty work you have prepared for him, in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen."
Charlie didn't lift his head for a moment: he wasn't used to such brief prayers.
"It's early in the morning, Charlie. I don't get warmed up for long prayers until noon. Now come on, Charlie. If you still want to get baptized, the water's waiting for us."
Five minutes later they were standing in the cold water of the Rochdale Canal hoping that no barge would come along till they were through. Brother Heber said the words and dunked him under the water. Charlie came up sputtering and Heber laughed and said. "By damn, Charlie Kirkham, I'll bet you're the first man ever to come out of this water cleaner than he went in!" Then Heber wrapped him in a great bear hug. "Brother Charlie," Heber said. "Welcome to the fellowship of the Saints." Then they climbed out of the water together and went home to warm up and dry off. "And I hope we can talk your mother into a few inches of medicinal wine," Heber said. "Water's so cold it damn near cut me in two up the middle."
It hadn't been half an hour since Charlie set down the Book of Mormon; it hadn't been eighteen hours since he first saw Heber Kimball preaching in a square in Manchester. And here Charlie's whole life was changed, turned right around without him ever suspecting it was going to happen till it came. But there was no doubt in his mind: The Lord had sent Heber Kimball to Charlie. The Lord cared what happened to Charlie Kirkham. Charlie was his own man now -- let the others do as they liked.
Old Hulme's face kept dancing before Charlie's eyes until Charlie said to him, "I belong to you now, I'm yours now, I'm your true son." Old Hulme smiled and nodded at him. He had done it right. He had answered all the questions right.
Dinah's madness of the night before was gone by morning, but in its place was an unaccustomed feeling of peace. She awoke looking at her husband's naked back, but instead of forcing herself not to resent him she felt the memory of her affection for him the night before, and she kissed his shoulder before she got out of bed, forgiving him for being so far short of what she needed her husband to be. For a moment she was even grateful for those good things that he actually was, and she even felt she knew him, and, knowing him, could love him.
She sang cheerfully as she prepared breakfast, and Val and Honor caught the mood and did not quarrel. It occurred to her as Matthew happily gorged himself that she ought to mention something about Heber Kimball and the new religion, but she did not want to spoil the happiness of the moment by mentioning its cause. Matt kissed her passionately and said, "Good-bye love," and she saw with pleasure that his eyes were a little dazzled as he gazed at her a moment before leaving. We might, she realized, make a happy marriage of this yet.
By the time the children were dressed, she no longer felt the languid contentment of her first waking. She was more vigorous than that. She wanted now to get out into the warm morning sunlight, to talk to someone. Mother, of course, since she did not know if Charlie shared her belief in this American apostle. It was not until she had the children out of the house and they were nearly at the footbridge that she remembered that Heber Kimball would probably still be there, that he had spent the night, that she might actually have a chance to speak to him today. She quickened her step, hoping he had not got an early start.
He was there at the table with his hair wet and sticking out every which way as he made short work of cheese and toasted day-old bread. She stood at the door; the children ran from her straight to Grammum, laughing and talking about the birds they had seen on the way. Dinah only stood there. Heber Kimball looked up at her and smiled.
"Good morning," Dinah said.
Abruptly the smile left Heber's face. Or no, did not leave it, but intensified to more than a smile, and he rose slowly from the chair and reached out a hand to her. She walked to him and took his hand. His eyes were very bright.
"Elect lady," he said softly, "the light of God is in your face."
She did not understand the words, but did not care about that; she knew that without her having to say anything, he knew all about what she had felt the night before. He had seen it in her face, and so she knew that it was real after all, that it was not just madness or the afterglow of her husband's love; the God that Heber had brought to her the night before was real.
As quickly as it had come, the feeling faded, and the touch of hands became a handshake. "Your hair's wet," she said.
"Took a duck in the canal this morning," Heber said.
Anna came to the table, trailing children, and took Heber's empty dish away, saying, "He baptized Charlie this morning."
Dinah could not speak. In all her life she had not known Charlie to make a decision like that on his own. Charlie, baptized already. It should have made her more confident of her own decision, but instead it frightened her a little. How much power did this Heber Kimball have over them?
"You look surprised," said Heber.
Dinah shrugged as if to deny it, then nodded slightly to confirm. Or thought she did -- usually when speech failed, her gestures also became so slight that no one noticed them. But Heber noticed.
"I was confused, too," said Heber. "Last night he kept smiling a little at my best words. I figured he thought I was pretty funny, and so I did most of my talking to you, because you weren't laughing. And now here is a believer, and you -- "
"Mr. Kimball, will you baptize me today, too?"
Heber made a face. "I wish you and Charlie had planned this better. My clothes are finally getting dry."
It was only then that Dinah realized Heber wasn't wearing his own suit. He was wearing some of John Kirkham's clothing, left behind when he had quit home years before. It fit Heber no worse than his own clothes, but that was not praise.
"I didn't know Charlie was going to be baptized," Dinah said.
"Well, at least you and your mother could have the consideration to do it at the same time. Your mother had a notion of waiting a few days."
Dinah looked at her mother, and Anna smiled. "I suppose there's no need to wait, if you and Charlie are so certain. But it's all so quick."
Heber laughed. "Quick! Why, you've been waiting all your lives for this. Before you were born you knew the gospel was true, and all your lives have been spent trying to see through your disguise and discover who you really are. Well, that's what the waters of baptism do -- strip away the disguises and let you see yourselves whole. Though in fact I hope you won't mind my asking if we could choose some water cleaner than that canal. I don't think I'll ever smell sweet again."
Dinah was glad enough to avoid the canal -- it was too public, and she did not want the eyes of strangers violating the event. "The River Medlock is clean upstream of Holttown, and it gets to be open country up that way. No one to see or -- "
"Interfere."
"Will that do?"
"How deep is it?"
"I don't know."
Anna spoke from the hearth. "I know a bathing place on Medlock. I've picnicked there before."
"Well," Heber said, "sounds fine to me. But you're not just being baptized, you're joining a whole church, and it might be nice to meet some of the Saints. Besides which, I haven't so much as tipped my hat to the other brethren here, which some might think is rather rude."
Dinah did not want any delay. "I want to be baptized this morning."
"Won't take more than a half-hour. And don't dilly-daily. I've just eaten half the town of Manchester for breakfast and I'm ready to baptize the other half by noon!" With Val perched on Heber's shoulders, they set off.
The English headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was installed in a dingy flat above a shop on Oldham Road, in one of the flimsy new buildings that Heber said would "not be around to see the Millennium unless the Lord hastens His coming." Dinah and Anna followed him up the stairs, carrying the children; Heber fairly bounded to the top, and they heard him bellow, "Brigham, Parley, it's good to see you!"
The office was furnished with one table, six stools, and a half-dozen packing crates, all stuffed with pamphlets like the ones Heber had given Charlie in the square. Stacked in one corner were bales of a journal, the Millennial Star. Heber had a copy of it and was sitting on the table poring over it, saying, "Wonderful! Wonderful! That'll wake 'em up!"
The two men in the office were both as American as Heber, sprawling back, hands behind heads, looking lanky and comfortable as pigs in a wallow, their hair just a little unkempt, their suits just a bit wrong for them. They were all fairly young men, too. Dinah had assumed that at least some of the apostles would be old, or older than Kimball, anyway. But both these men looked to be under forty, and their faces seemed more accustomed to grinning than to the sober mien most preachers cultivated.
It was Brigham Young, the one with the roundish face and light-brown, almost golden hair, who saw them first. Immediately he stood. "Heber, did these ladies come with you or find their way here on their own?"
Heber turned around, wrinkling some papers in the process, and looked very embarrassed. "Of course they came with me." He got up from the table and strode to them, ushering them into the room. "Sister Anna, Sister Dinah, and Dinah's children Val and Honor.
The jut-jawed man in the black suit offered his hand. "I'm Parley Pratt, apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the only man in the room fit to recognize real beauty when I see it. Are you sisters?"
Anna laughed and allowed him to flirt a little. In the meantime, Brigham Young quietly introduced himself to Dinah. "I've learned," he said, "not to try to cut into Parley's conversation when he's performing for a lady. He takes it as a challenge and talks twice as long to put me in my place."
"I hear you maligning me," Parley said. Then he immediately returned to his flirtation with Dinah's mother.
Brigham grinned. "You see?"
"Beautiful, beautiful," Heber said, thrusting the Millennial Star at Brigham.
Brigham continued to grin at Dinah. "So I see."
"I meant the paper, Brigham. Sister Dinah is married to a man much better-looking than you."
"Impossible," Brigham said. Without looking at Heber, he took the journal and offered it to Dinah. "Here it is, the first issue of the first journal of the only true church of Jesus Christ in the British Isles. What do you think?"
Dinah was used to Heber's exuberance and rough American manners; she didn't mind Parley's rustic gallantries with her mother. But there was something about Brigham Young that annoyed her. A cocksureness about him. A hint that when he jokingly pretended to have a high opinion of himself, it was no joke at all. This is a man who's used to being obeyed, Dinah decided, and just as she had always defied her brother Robert when he had such a mood on him, she could not resist putting a small needle in Brigham's inflated pride.
"The quality of printing is quite good," Dinah said, "but it would not be harmed by a bit of attention from someone who knows how to spell." Deliberately she selected an article that had the initials "B.Y." at the end and said, "For instance, this article is virtually unintelligible to someone who actually knows how to read and write."
Heber whooped and Brigham smiled, but Dinah could see a slight hardness form around his eyes. He knew what she was doing.
"Sister Dinah, I agree with you completely. Just this morning we prayed for someone to come along and help us on that very matter. Here's my article for the next issue. I hope you'll be kind enough to correct it."
He held a sheaf of papers before her. This had gone too far, she knew -- the game was becoming real, and she didn't want to make an enemy. "No," she said, "I'm not good enough myself to do it."
"I assure you," Brigham said, still smiling, "that it would be a great service to the work of the Lord if you'd fix up our writing. After all, we don't want to give the impression here in England that the Mormons are nothing but a bunch of country bumpkins who haven't the brains to spell cat."
"I didn't say that," Dinah said.
"I didn't say you did."
There they stood, the papers between them, both of them smiling cheerfully. Dinah had challenged Brigham Young's authority, however slightly, and he was determined that she yield to him. Dinah had never bowed to Robert or, for that matter, to any man, and she certainly wasn't going to bow to Brigham Young. At the same time, she didn't want to make a quarrel of it -- only Joseph Smith and his two counselors had more responsibility in the Kingdom of God than he.
She almost said -- the words formed clearly in her mind -- "I couldn't correct your writing without a translator to tell me what it said." Instead she used Brigham's own tactic. She could out-humble him easily. "How could a mere woman hope to do justice to a man's ideas?" she said, and grinned right back at him.
Brigham was beaten and he knew it -- she could see it again in the hardness at the edges of his eyes. He held that expression for just a moment, and then laughed aloud, the corners of his eyes crinkling with genuine mirth. "You haven't been a Latter-day Saint long enough, Sister Dinah," he said. "All the sisters in America, at least, know perfectly well that God only gave the priesthood to men to even up the odds a little."
It was all so jovial. But underneath the conversation Dinah knew that the true dialogue had gone another way.
Don't cross me, woman, Brigham Young had said, for I'm much stronger than you.
And Dinah had answered, Watch your own step, Brother Brigham, for I'm your match.
They were baptized in a place on the River Medlock far enough from Manchester that the city was only a pall of smoke in the distance. The only spectators were sluggish cattle and a misanthropic squirrel who cursed them and vanished in the grass. There were a few trees along the banks of the stream, and on the other side of the fields the poplars stood as a windbreak wherever oaks and ashes hadn't deigned to grow. It was a place of peace, and Heber spoke Dinah's feelings when he said, "By damn, if heaven looks this good all over, I can't wait to die."
Parley told them, speaking of dying and heaven, how Brother Somebody- or-other had been absolutely certain the Millennium would come on April sixth, 1840. "Why, I think he was downright disappointed when he w
"I remember," Heber said, "but I remember Brother Joseph telling him, 'Brother, if you really believed, why didn't you go and borrow a thousand dollars on a note due and payable on April seventh? And why did you buy a week's worth of groceries just the day before? If you'd had enough faith, why, the end might have come right on schedule.'"
"Now, Heber," Brigham said, "you know that Brother Joseph didn't say any such thing. It was you that said it."
"I know that, Brigham, but the story sounds so much better if it's him."
They had a laugh at that, but Dinah noticed that it was Brigham who damped the levity a bit, refused to let the tall tales get out of hand. The others never particularly deferred to him; they talked as if each man was free to decide to do whatever he wanted. But in fact Brigham was firmly in control, and things went his way. Dinah had to admire the subtlety of his leadership even as she resented the fact that he exercised it atall.