As I entered the Temple that day, my eyes sought Dorothea and soon found her raven braids peeking from beneath her bonnet. She sat with her father and mother near the front. In the last weeks I had felt as if part of me had sickened and died. There was little more than a cool emptiness left within my chest. Pickle had been solicitous, warning me of destruction and praying I’d return to reason and moderation. Now if I saw Dorothea it was only from a distance, here in the Temple or when she came to town with her mother to Teague’s store or with her father during his visits to Josiah. It was rumored Bainbridge was being considered for eldership. Always she would bow her head rather than meet my eyes. I still had not learned the reason for the breaking of our courtship, and the letter I had left for her at Teague’s went unanswered. I tried to keep from looking at her, to stare at the rafters or out the windows, but it was impossible. With her back to me I could study her without consequence: her shawl-wrapped shoulders, her bare neck, her bonneted head. Was she happy?
Once everyone was settled, Josiah stepped through the door at the front of the sanctuary, bowed his head as he walked through the Arch of the Blood, and mounted the pulpit. He looked out over us, and an even deeper quiet fell upon the pews.
“There has been confusion and uncertainty,” he began, his voice calm. “I’ve shared it myself. We have come to the site of Zion, we have begun building the city, and yet we look around us and wonder, Where are the multitudes? Last night, the fourth night of my vigil, the Lord put me into a deep sleep, then took me up and showed me a vision of our island. I saw Port Hebron, I saw the forest and the farms, I saw the lake around us, wide as a sea.” Now his voice began to rise. His hands gripped the pulpit’s sides. His eyes flashed. “The Lord made me to look at the lake and, lo, fire appeared on the horizon, blazing toward our shores. The Lord said, ‘This unholy fire you must quench.’ Then the fire fell away, and in the middle of the island a pit opened and out of the pit came a cloud of pestilence. The Lord showed me the pestilence spreading among us. It killed everybody it touched. The Lord’s voice said, ‘This unholy plague you must cure.’ I said to the Lord, ‘The fire I understand, the traders who circle our island. But the plague? The plague I do not understand.’”
Josiah gazed at the assembly room’s ceiling and stretched out his arms, as if still in dialogue with the heavens. “‘There is a sickness among you,’ He said. ‘I will not send My Son to reign over the impure.’ ‘But what is this sickness, and how am I to cure it?’ I asked. ‘You will not see it, you will not know it, you will not cure it, but I will send a Judge who will do these things,’ He said. ‘You must make ready for him. You must build him a house, a seat from which he can spy out your pestilence.’ The Lord then showed me how we are to build this house, and I have spent all morning setting down His instructions here.” Josiah waved a paper scribbled with notes. “We begin work tomorrow. Praise be to the Lord.”
Hunched over the pulpit, sweating, exhausted, he awaited our response. The room remained silent. Perhaps the doubters were considering whether the vision quelled their anxieties, the accusers of humbuggery assessing its authenticity. But after only a few seconds we answered in unison, each of us shouting the words Josiah had taught us: “Glory and thanks to the Lord for His guiding hand!”
A FEW NIGHTS LATER I was in my corner of Pickle’s cabin, playing my violin, when Elder Williamson came to the door. It was past ten — darkness had finally fallen — and Pickle was readying himself for sleep. Elder Williamson told me to get my rifle. Some whiskey traders had come from Mackinac and set fire to Elder Hunt’s cabin. They’d not yet been so bold, and even though the cabin was saved Josiah had ordered a sortie to chase them; since the vision he’d demanded more vigilance. After Elder Williamson left I splashed my face with water. My previous weeks on sortie duty had been quiet and I felt unprepared. Bidding Pickle good night, I took my rifle and went to the dock. The others had already begun the prayer. Josiah was there, placing his hand on each one’s forehead. I raced up and he put his hand to mine.
We paired into canoes; I was matched with a man named Spofford. I didn’t know him well. He’d arrived at the island after me and worked in one of the logging camps. Josiah had elected to lead us himself, and at his orders we paddled out of the bay toward the near islands to the east, the likeliest place we’d find the whiskey traders. Above us a thick spangle of stars cast a faint light on the water. As Josiah had instructed, we took care with our paddles, guarding against every needless splash.
Halfway to Garden Island we spied a rocking lantern. I had heard stories of ghosts on the lake, and I started, but Spofford reached a hand back to quiet me, then, following Josiah, steered us toward the light. As we drew nearer, I saw it was only an Indian in his canoe, night fishing. Josiah gave him a present of smoked beef and a small sack of cornmeal, and the Indian told us that he’d seen the whiskey traders pass three hours earlier, heading toward the notch bay on Garden Island’s western point. We paddled in that direction and soon made out the glimmer of the traders’ fire on the shore, heard their shouts echo across the lake.
“I’d say they’re a few sheets,” Spofford whispered back to me. We went past the notch, to a narrow spit of land just to the east, and pulled our canoes up the beach. Once we were in the wood, Josiah gave his instructions. Elder Williamson would lead four men through the trees to a position behind the whiskey traders’ camp while the others crept along the sands. We were only to give the traders a scare, Josiah warned us, but enough of a scare to show them we were prepared to fight. After Elder Williamson’s party took a five-minute start, the rest of us set out along the shore with Josiah.
The traders had bivouacked at the tree line, their camp not fifty feet from the water, and as we took our positions along the lake’s edge I counted them. There were six circled around the fire, and they passed a jug while one among them, a blond-bearded man wrapped in furs and skins, bellowed a story about killing a bear. They didn’t see us. The fire was too bright in their eyes, their attentions too occupied by the story.
I looked to Josiah, who was holding up his hand. He dropped it and let out an animal screech. At that Spofford raced off to set fire to the traders’ canoes and the rest of us shot our rifles into the air and hooted like crazed owls. From the darkness of the wood Williamson and his men echoed us.
The whiskey traders leapt up at the tumult. They reeled and stumbled drunkenly as they looked about in terror.
“Who’s there?” one of them called, aiming his rifle at one blackness after another.
“Damned God-squawkers!” another shouted as he sat back down and applied himself to the jug.
“We didn’t mean for it to burn,” pleaded a third, and knelt in the sand.
We stood in our places and kept up our hooting. Behind us the lake, black and calm, lapped at the shore. Down the beach the traders’ canoes were in full blaze.
We were about to return to our own canoes when the trader who’d been telling the story bolted toward us with a shout of “Goddamn it!” We were not prepared for such a turn, and nobody moved to stop him. By luck he came right at Josiah and tackled him. “Got one of you now!” the trader shouted. Josiah lay struggling on the sand, pinned beneath the trader’s knees. Something glittered in the starlight. A knife. My stomach lurched. Without thinking I rushed at the trader and swung the butt of my rifle into his temple. I pushed him off and gave my hand to Josiah, who took it, rose, and whistled for the sortie’s end. The remaining whiskey traders fled into the trees with their gear. Only after the last had gone did I return to Josiah’s attacker. I shook the man, but he didn’t stir. I felt him. Already his body was cooling.