From the Relief Society Magazine, August 1942 –

Whither Thou Goest

By LaRene King Bleecker

Seven-year-old Dolma, in a calico dress, sat on the spring seat of a heavy freight wagon, her knees drawn up under her.

“How far away is it where Father is?” she asked dreamily, staring straight ahead at the blue stretch of horizon.

“Around five hundred miles, or more,” Hope said, squinting up at the slanting sun. Just a few days away, but weeks and weeks distant at the rate the oxen traveled. “How did we ever get so far behind,” Hope wondered, looking at her children – Dolma, with her thin, eager face and light brown pigtails, and Junior, whose dark hair and eyes matched Ron’s.

The other teams could not possibly be more than a mile ahead, or two perhaps, if they made good time. But her own oxen were tired, and her food was getting low, and Juney was only two years old.

In the seat beside Dolma, Juney dug at his sleepy eyes with rigid little fists.

“Sleepy boy,” Hope said, absently, and when she spoke to the oxen, her voice was automatic. Her thoughts were with Ron who rode ahead of the company as scout and look-out man, so commissioned by Brigham Young. It had been days since she had seen him. She thought about the house they had built back in Nauvoo. They had loved it so, and had lived there just long enough to become attached to it. And in the next lot were the Rigbys – Margaret and Sam. They, too, had a new home, built in expectation of their first child.

The day Ron and Sam had come from town (their faces and clothing black with the smoke and grime of an all-night vigil fighting fires set by the mob) she and Margaret had been planning next year’s flower gardens. A seed catalogue fell to the floor as the men came through the door.

“Pack and be in readiness to cross the river. Orders have come to evacuate Nauvoo,” Ron said, hurriedly.

“But our house, Ron – the first real home Dol and Juney have ever had.” Hope bent over for the catalogue, but Margaret had retrieved it and was beside Sam showing him the attractive pages.

“Look, zinnias and larkspur and hollyhocks. And see these pansies, Sam. We’ll plant a bed of them near our baby’s window.”

That had been weeks ago, and they had lost track of the Rigbys; and back across the river in Nauvoo, their homes, and many others, were a mass of ruins.

“Oh, well,” Hope thought, “we lived there four or five months. And now it will be some place else. I’ve lived all my life following someone else around – first, my father who was a minister, always changing parishes; then, Aunt Amy who moved when she got the urge, and she was always having urges.”

The only time she ever stayed in one place was after she embraced the gospel. She had been baptized in New York State, and had been loyal to the Saints until she died.

“With her legacy I could have settled down in a real home with a life of my own, and I could have gone on with my music,” Hope thought.

“But then I had to meet and fall in love with Ronald, and marry him, and move from county to county and from state to state, wherever the Mormons were gathered.”

And now they were moving on and on farther west. And Ron was one of the leaders, going on ahead to clear the way for the wagon trains. She loved him so that nothing else mattered.

She thought of their parting at Sugar Creek. Their words were casual.

“Take care of yourselves,” Ron said, his eyes on Hope, standing with Dolma and Juney, waiting to see him off. She turned quickly to go into the tent.

“See you at Council Bluffs,” she said. But Dolma pulled her back.

“I want to see Father ride over the hill,” Dolma said.

“I don’t,” Hope thought. “I don’t want to see him go.” But she stood between the two children, holding their hands, watching Ron ride swiftly toward the horizon. He waved once, and then he was gone.

“Us women are alone, now,” Dolma said, walking briskly back with Hope to the wagon.

When days had passed without Ron’s coming to visit them at various camps along the way, Dolma prayed every night for her father’s return.

“Send Father back to us,” she prayed with the solemn faith of a seven-year-old. “Please send Father back to us. Please send him back.” Then she laughed happily.

“I think He heard me, Mother, ’cause I heard a voice say, ‘All right, Dolma.’”

“Don’t count too much on it, darling,” Hope said. “There may be more important things the Lord wants your father to do.”

Then she received a letter. Ron had sent it with a returning rider:

“I can’t come back for you,” he wrote her, “and I haven’t located Sam so that you could travel along with him. Do you think you can get here alone?”

“Oh, simple,” Hope said, using one of Margaret’s favorite expressions. “All the oxen have to do is to move a foot at a time, and it’s easy to move a foot at a time with them.”

Now, jabbing the whip stock into the iron socket, she pushed the slatted sunbonnet back and rested her head against the back of the seat.

“Oh, simple,” she thought, wryly. Days and days of making the children comfortable, of driving the plodding oxen! nights and nights of making camp, then up again early, and on, being cheerful because of the children, pretending everything is all right, pretending to Dolma that someday we’ll have a home of our own!

For a moment she let resentment fill her. “Why should I go on? Why should I always have to leave my home, any home, to follow Ron to the ends of the earth?”

Ron loved going. In spite of all that he said, he loved going. “That’s it,” she thought. He was absorbed in his work for the Church, and proud because of the trust the brethren placed in him.

“What do I have? Why should he, because he is a man and loves change and adventure, keep moving; and why should I, just because I am a woman, be expected to follow and wait? He has work that he loves. And I drag along, rationing the food, day after day, to keep the children from starving.”

We’ll drive thousands of miles and live in a one-room hut made of crude logs, and I’ll tell Dol stories about the house we’re going to build. For years I’ve been telling her that.

“Yes, darling. we’ll have a house with lots of windows in it to let in the sunlight, and carpets on the floors, and a trundle bed for you and one for Juney.”

Someday … Oh, yes, someday. But when?

She leaned her shoulder against the wagon bow and stared out at the rolling hills. One more hill. What’s on the other side? Oh, just another hill. On and on and on – forever.

And all day and every evening, the trek of wagons and cattle; men, women, and children, all pushing forward to an unknown goal.

Often she recognized friends and neighbors; more often the faces were unfamiliar. But all were stamped with the same inflexible determination.

Thinking of this, Hope sighed. And Dolma’s eyes turned at once from the dusty wagon trail. The pigtails swung. “Tell about the future, Mother,” she said.

“Oh, not again. Look out and see if the cow is still tied securely. We’ve got to have milk for Juney.”

“Mother, tell us just as you did before, only put more in about us women.”

Hope’s young face, gray with dust and fatigue, cracked into a smile. “Look, darling. In ten years from now you’ll be a young lady, as old as I was when I was baptized.”

“Only I’ll be baptized when I’m eight,” reminded Dolma.

“Yes. When you’re eight … And us women, Dol, will still be just like we are now. Only then we’ll have an active Relief Society, the kind the Prophet Joseph organized the day Aunt Anne was there. And Dol, I hope you’ll always have a generous heart and love everyone.”

“Will we have a home, mother, with Father there, and all?”

“Yes, a real home. And Father will be there.”

Dolma laughed, delightedly. Juney kicked his legs and said, “Yah, Yah!”

“Oh, please, dear God, please give me the strength to hold on and make this come true,” Hope thought, and suddenly she recalled what Margaret Rigby had said so often: “Of course you can do it. You can do anything if you have to.”

But one night when Hope’s patience had worn as thin as a thread, when it seemed to her she would never be able to get the sounds out of her ears – the jolting wagon, the wind’s roar, the grind of the wheels through sand – she came to the bend of the river and saw a wagon which she recognized as belonging to the Rigbys. She knew it by the green chicken crate tied to the back, also by a wooden barrel and a churn with wide brass hoops. Perhaps they had made camp nearby. If so, that meant that Margaret’s hour had come.

Hope was not long in finding a camp site close to the others, and as soon as she had the children safely in bed and had asked neighbors to look out for them, she started a search for the Rigbys. As she went through the camps she was recalling Margaret’s words the last time they had been together: “I want my baby to be born in a house,” Margaret had said. “I want it to be sheltered and safe. Oh, Hope, do you suppose we’ll ever settle down and have homes of our own?”

Hope had given Margaret one of her wry smiles. “Well, I love Ron so much, I suppose I’ll follow him to the ends of the earth,” she said, “and end up by living in an igloo.”

“Oh, Hope, you must have a home for Dolma and Junior,” Margaret insisted. “Children are entitled to be born and reared in a home.”

Hope thought of this now as, having at last found the Rigbys, she saw the shelter in which Margaret lay, fighting the writhing torment of birth pangs. Sam Rigby had slung together a makeshift hut. The sides were formed of blankets fastened to poles stuck in the ground. there was a roof of bark which kept out the sun, but not the rain. Margaret lay on a pallet on the dirt floor, surrounded by an odd assortment of boxes and camp litter. A tallow dip shed the only light.

Without spoken words both women knew the crisis had come now for Margaret. Sensing the question in her pathetic, brown eyes, Hope knelt and took the sick woman’s hands in her own. “If what you fear happens, I’ll take the baby and care for it as if it were my own,” she promised.

Hours later the rain began. Margaret’s ordeal was over, though Hoe was never quite clear as to all that had happened, so many emotions had run rampant through her being. But the rain had come, and it had seeped through the frail bark roof and onto the pallet. Kind sisters stood holding pans and pails to catch the water. Hope wondered why, for where Margaret’s soul had gone there was no need of help. The sheeted form on the pallet was past all that.

Hope sat stiffly on a wooden box holding Margaret’s new-born child in her arms. In her thoughts she could still hear the dying woman’s last words and see the patient smile on her face as she said: “I’m so thankful my baby was born in a house.”

Bitterness and resentment filled Hope’s mind. This, then, was what happened to women who followed their men faithfully to the end. She looked at Sam Rigby, his shoulders hunched forward, hands clenched, his eyes burning. She wondered what thoughts were seething through his mind. Quiet, unassuming men often had great depth of feeling. Was Sam bitter now that this tragedy had come to him? Hope tried to imagine what Ron would do if this sort of thing should happen to her. A chill feeling of foreboding gripped her body. She held the infant close to her breast and felt its heart fluttering, and knew it was dying. When the tiny form grew rigid, she still sat without power of will or motion. Her own fears kept her silent. For with the passing of Margaret’s baby, a movement close to her heart, confirmed what she had believed for some time. She was soon to have another child …

Stumbling back through the dawn, she was unaware of the tang of rain-soaked earth or the flush of rose in the sky. As she reached her wagon, relieved that Dolma and Juney were sleeping soundly, she heard uncertain, shuffling footsteps, and turned to see Sam Rigby following. “I’m goin’ back,” he told her, “back to Missouri. Our folks are there, her’s and mine.”

“Would … would Margaret want you to?” Hope asked, too weary to feel surprise or to offer sympathy.

“If the baby had lived, things mighta worked out. But now I’ve got nothin’ to live for. I’m not aimin’ to follow the Saints any longer. Maybe it’s true, the Gospel, I dunno. I don’t care any more. Tomorrow, as soon as the buryin’s over, I’m leavin’. I thought you ought to know. Good-by, an’ I’m obliged to you, Hope.”

He shuffled away, and the darkness seemed to blot him out completely. Her tears came then, and forebodings and doubts. She crept into bed beside the sleeping children and lay there taut as a wire that has been stretched to the breaking point.

Why was she always alone? Where was Ron? It seemed to her that he liked staying away. What would he say when she told him she was to have another child? She couldn’t go through with it. Bitterly she questioned her right to bring offspring into the world to suffer, to die, as the Rigby baby had died.

Then a thought came to her. She sat up in the wagon bed as though propelled on a string. Sam’s words echoed in her ears. “I’m not aimin’ to follow any longer!”

The despair of his loss had overwhelmed him. He was adrift with a sorrow too deep to be borne without help. And she had let him go without holding out the hope, the faith, and assurance of eternal life. she had failed to carry out the Prophet’s words:

“And you shall be counselors and aids to the Priesthood. Queens of the home! Guides to youth. I now turn the key …!”

Slowly dawn crept over the sleeping world and with it the dawn of an awakening in Hope’s heart. This glorious promise was bigger than they were. It would fill the whole world with its message!

A few days later a scout stopped by the encampment and brought her a letter. It was from Ronald.

He had felt her need of him. Was everything all right? He had built her a cabin, not much of a home to be sure, but dry and warm, and he would be riding toward the camp in a few days to meet her and bring her back. And how were Dolma and Juney? Were they all right?

Oh, they were! They were! Everything was all right now that Ron had said he had a place for her and was coming soon to meet her. Hope knew now that she would follow Ron forever and ever. She would follow him to the ends of the earth, and back …

“How far is it to where Father is, Mother?”

“Hush, Dolma! I don’t know. I’m tired, Dol. I can’t be your mother all the time you know. Some of the time I like to be me.”

That was a fine way to speak to one’s child. But she and Dol were friends, and Dol understood her.

“What will Father saw about the cow? I mean about us losing her?” Dol asked, presently.

“He’ll say that we didn’t tie her securely. Cows like to run away sometimes just as children do.”

“Mother, tell us about our house, the one we’re going to have, just like you did before, only different. Start with Papa.”

“Well,” Hope began, “in about a week from now, you’ll be asking questions just as you are doing now. And Juney will be scraping his mush bowl and saying, ‘More, more,’ just as he was doing at breakfast this morning. And then I’ll look up, and way in the distance yonder …” She pointed in line with the rutted road, “I’ll see …”

“Yes, yes, Mother, go on!”

“I’ll see a handsome stranger riding toward us on a black horse.”

Dolma giggled delightedly and held her hand to her mouth. Junior kicked his feet.

“And when he sees us, he will say, ‘Hello, hello! I’m looking for a wife and two beautiful children.’ And Dolma will say, ‘That’s us, Father, that’s us!’ And we’ll all follow along; and then, before we know it, Father will say, ‘Hah! Here is the house!’ Then he’ll grab Juney and toss him up, up, clear to the ceiling.”

“What ceiling, Mother?”

“The ceiling of our beautiful house.”

“Will it have windows in it? And a trundle bed for me, and one for Juney?”

“Not at first, I’m afraid, but later. Yes, I’m sure we’ll have those. And we’ll have a stove, and real chairs and a table.”

“Go on, Mother.”

“And the blue china dishes that Aunt Anne left …”

“Will our house have love in it, Mother?”

“Yes … love most of all, darling. and we’ll plant flowers – zinnias and larkspur and hollyhocks.”

Dolma laughed delightedly, her fingers clutching her mother’s calloused, brown hand. Juney, flat on his back, waved his chubby legs and grinned happily.

The oxen plodded on over the jolting ruts, on and on and on.