From the Relief Society Magazine, July 1964 –

Don’t Leave Me

Helen B. Gibbons

Lucretia filled a steaming bowl with cornmeal mush for Jim, taking care not to spill on her bright rag carpet. The new cabin had a sweet smell about it, a neatness and warmth, but there was no pleasure in the pretty room for her this morning. She went and stood unseeingly at the tiny window.

”Aren’t you going to eat, Crishy?” Jim’s face was clouded but his voice tender. “You need it, for the baby’s sake as well as you own.”

She could not even look at him. Her eyes were red from sleeplessness and frustrated weeping.

“I couldn’t swallow a bite.” They had talked half the night. Now there was nothing left to say. Jim ate his mush and milk in silence while Lucretia nervously busied herself about the room, smoothing the fresh straw mattress on their bed, pulling up the clean quilts. With the dipper from the bucket, she watered the geranium on the window-ledge.

Half her mind kept silently insisting, I won’t go! I can’t go! But the other half yearned for the sweet safety of her husband’s approval. Without turning to look, she could see his square bronzed face, and his light, bright hair. Even in homespun work clothes he looked magnificent. She had often reflected that this handsome outer form was but the mirror image of his powerful inner character. She loved him so much that an estrangement now was pure agony.

“Surely we won’t leave Jamie,” she pleaded softly at last. “Must we so soon forget our promise?”

Jim frowned, but he kissed her before he spoke.

“Don’t Crishy. Don’t torture yourself. We have been called on a mission. Everything will work out all right, the way it’s supposed to. Don’t worry.”

He pulled his long arms into an old, warm coat, and started out the door.

‘Til be back as early as I can.”

Lucretia nodded numbly and watched him hitch the team to the wagon and set off toward the east mountains for a load of winter firewood. The wagon wheels stirred up circles of dust, rolled along by canyon breezes. The first glint of sunlight flashed over the hill, and in its gleam the silhouette of a rough headstone caught Lucretia’s eye.

Seeing it, she ached anew, and an involuntary sob slipped past her throat. They had laid Jamie there so recently, a boy too young, too wonderful to go so soon. Jim and Lucretia had lovingly hauled the granite slab to mark the fresh-turned grave. For days Jim had chiseled at the stone, briefly to state its purpose:

JAMES PHILLIP CURRIE

1850-1864

It had been Jamie’s wish to remain near them, so they had placed him there above the family farm. His very last words had been a plea, coming from the depths of the nightmare he had suffered so long: “Don’t leave me, Mamma, Pappa! Please don’t leave me behind!”

Lucretia had held his fever-racked young body in her trembling arms. Hot tears spilled out upon the light, bright head.

“We’ll keep you with us, Jamie.”

Now Lucretia climbed the hill again and knelt beside her son’s resting place.

People say that doing something over and over makes it easier. That’s not always true. Laying Jamie away was not easier. It had been hard to see little Clara placed into a makeshift coffin and buried beside the trail on the plains, but it was even harder to lose their only other child, Jamie.

Poor Jamie. His nightmare had begun in Nebraska, when cholera hit the camp. Many people grew sick, and almost every day another grave was planted beside the road. The company would pause and sorrowfully conduct a simple funeral — a prayer, a few brief words, a sacred song accompanied by Sister Hancock and her violin. Then they would move on. When precious little Clara, with her chubby face and happy heart, took sick, Jim took Jamie away to another wagon, away from the sickness. From afar, the boy would watch the family wagon with big, frightened eyes.

“How’s Clara today?” he would call.

The news was always bad. It grew worse. One day, the rough marker on the grave beside the trail bore little Clara’s name. Next day the company moved on, and the Currie family, weeping and turning back to catch a last glimpse of their baby’s headstone, rolled on to the Valley and left behind a little girl in her eternal sleep.

It bothered Jamie. It bothered him a lot.

“Why did we have to leave Clara there alone?” he would ask. Some nights he woke up crying, and the nightmare was always the same.

“Don’t leave me! Please don’t ever leave me!”

On the chilly hillside Lucretia smoothed the dirt over the little mound that was Jamie. She could so vividly remember every detail of his bouncing, vibrant self. He had been wild with excitement as the new cabin rose to completion. He worked as hard as any man to help his
father with the construction.

Lucretia shivered a little, but smiled, remembering Jamie on this plot of earth he loved so passionately — the big, old Cottonwood trees, the fertile fields, the secret yields of berries along the banks of the singing, ice-cold creek.

“It’s our canyon, and our valley, and we will live happily ever after,” he gaily said.

No one dreamed that he would have to live his whole life out in fourteen years. At least, he savored every minute, enjoying life with a contagious zest. When Jamie fell into his final sleep, many lights went out in Lucretia’s heart.

“I must get to work,” she scolded herself aloud, starting down the well-worn trail to the cabin. “I must not sit here thinking.”

She walked carefully because of the baby. She walked, but she wanted to run to get away from the memory of Jamie’s nightmare. It hurt to remember his frantic pleas. She did not like to remember, but she could not forget. The fever struck and Jamie grew delirious. Then the old fears returned and multiplied.

“Don’t leave me behind! Please don’t leave me!” It became, in his delirium, almost a panic-stricken scream.

The morning sun now flooded the valley, and Lucretia caught her breath at the lovely view which lay before her. This was home to her — a real home at last. She had put her roots down deeply here in this green and gold landscape. Here, with their own hands, they had built their cabin beneath the shady trees. Here was the good soil that filled their winter stores. Here were dear friends as neighbors.

Why can’t we stay? Why do they have to call us away?

With a kind of fury, she attacked her work, as if to quiet her unhappy thoughts. Threshing out dry beans for winter storage, Lucretia pounded the pods almost too vigorously. At the scrubbing board, she wore clothes thin.

Why? Why? Yet even as she questioned, her conscience smote her. She and Jim had never before refused a call. Lucretia hated herself for her feelings, but most of all she hated the call itself.

They had been asked to move to the Muddy River to help establish some settlements there. The Church needed cotton, and a safe way-station between California and St. George. Jim and Lucretia, young and strong, were called to the Muddy Mission.

The Muddy! Even the name sounded dreadful, but it was worse when Lucretia talked to her cousin who had recently come north on a visit from St. George. Her cousin said that the country was hot and dry, with no shelter or shade from the sun. It was bad enough at St. George with flies and filth and hunger, everyone ill from chills and fever. Her cousin said things were even worse toward Las Vegas Spring where the Muddy River lay. The land was tortured and rough, and quicksand lay on river beds. Worst of all, there were Indians on the Muddy, primitive, dangerous marauders.

To go to such a place and begin again! To abandon this lovely cabin! To bear a child in the wilderness where chills and fever crept into the settlements on the dread night air! To break a promise and leave Jamie behind! There was no solution. Lucretia worked in gloom, feeling quite miserable.

She was outside in the afternoon sun when Sister Hancock hobbled up the road carrying her ancient violin case. Lucretia had always loved the violin. Long years ago in her prosperous home in the East she had played such an instrument. Her love for music had been a bond between the two women — Sister Hancock, aged, crippled, but ever cheerful, and the younger Lucretia. Sister Hancock’s violin was a fine instrument, and her most valuable possession, for she was very poor.

”Lucretia,” she cried, embracing her young friend, “Fm proud to hear that you’ve been called on a mission.”

Lucretia dared not answer, not knowing what to say. It did not matter. Sister Hancock preferred to do the talking most of the time anyway.

‘T envy you and Jim. You’re young and you can really do things. Now me, I’m no good at all any more.”

“Oh, Sister Hancock, you always do good.”

“No. I guess my time is almost up. That’s why I came over here today. The happiest days I ever spent were working to serve the Lord. I just kept wishing that I could do something for the Muddy Mission, too, and in the night I thought of it.”

“You did?”

“It’s my dear old violin. I’d consider it a favor if you’d take it and make music for the saints on the mission. It would be almost like part of me going to serve the Church. I won’t need it much longer anyway. Take it, dearie. Take it, with my blessing.”

Lucretia hesitated, but Sister Hancock was firm. She carried the musical instrument inside and gently laid it upon the table.

“But it’s all you have — you will need it for yourself.”

“Rheumatism’s been getting worse. I’ll never last the winter out, and I’m kind of glad. It will be a relief to discard this old aching body, and go where they say you will be forever young. Perhaps there will be music there for me to make.”

It was difficult to speak, and Lucretia struggled to keep her voice steady.

“Thank you, dear Sister Hancock. I’ll always treasure it.”

“Just you play it well for other folks and I’ll be content.”

The aged visitor stayed awhile. She dozed a bit and talked a lot. Lucretia needed merely to smile and nod and listen to her lonely neighbor’s reminiscences. She was glad, for her heart was in turmoil. Strange how cheerfully Sister Hancock could speak of discarding her old, aching body. Poor, dear little soul.

It grew late and her visitor departed. Lucretia finished her work and built up the fire to fix supper for Jim. Then she wandered outside to watch for his wagon. Sitting on the bench beside the cabin wall, she huddled in her shawl to look and to think. Up on the hill, the granite headstone was almost indistinguishable in its setting. It blended with the background until she had difficulty determining which of the many stones was Jamie’s. Just before the sun set, it cast a lovely, soft glow over the hillside for a moment. In the unreal-looking light, everything seemed different. Sitting there waiting, thinking, half -praying, Lucretia experienced a strange feeling. The lovely, soft glow engulfed her heart with a kind of peacefulness. She felt better than she had in many days, for suddenly, everything looked different to her.

Jamie! The hill does not hold Jamie at all. He’s gone on ahead to the better place Sister Hancock anticipates, where there is sweet music for her to play. Why didn’t I think of it before? Why couldn’t I see it?

Wagon wheels crunched over the rocks, and in the twilight Lucretia ran to meet her tired husband with his load of wood. He reined in and climbed down with open arms.

“Oh, Jim, forgive my doubts,” she cried. “Of course we will accept our call. I want to go to the Muddy with you. We have
our work to do.”

“I knew you would, Crishy. I knew it all the time.” He smoothed her soft curls with roughened fingertips.

“We won’t be leaving Jamie,” Lucretia explained — as much to herself as to Jim. “We’ll just be getting nearer to where he is now.”