Sophie's Journey - Chapter 10
The Iron Road West
The train pulled into the station, sending up clouds of smoke and steam. Sophie stood among a crowd of strangers, her arms tired from holding little Otto, her hand gripping Anne's worn sleeve. In Gentofte, horse carts moved slowly and quietly. Here in New York, the air was thick and smelled of coal. The train wheels were taller than Peter, her oldest, and the brakes screeched as the train stopped. Everything here moved fast, and Sophie felt like she could barely keep up.
"We are to climb inside those boxes?" Marianne asked, her voice thin and wavering. She stood with her eyes wide open, staring at the livestock cars that offered nothing resembling comfort. "It looks like a prison, Sophie. A cage for the cattle."
Sophie didn't answer her friend. She was too busy counting heads, making sure she hadn't lost any of the four children in the crush, eyeing the bundles that held everything they had left of home. "It's wood and iron, Marianne, and it'll get us there in days instead of weeks. We're the lucky ones."
She climbed into the cattle car. The light inside was dim, and the air smelled of too many people and old tobacco. There were no beds or benches, just bare walls and a floor that shook with the train. Sophie found a corner for her family. Peter sat straight and quiet, looking serious like his father. Emma drew shapes on the dirty window with her finger.
The train jerked forward with a snap that threw Anne hard against Sophie's side. No warning, no easing into it, just sudden motion and the world outside streaking by. Sophie felt her stomach turn from the motion. The whistle blew every few miles. Sophie thought about how fast everything moved here. The train carried families like hers west, but it did not care about their hopes or fears.
"It is so loud," Emma whispered, her finger drawing a small, crooked house in the dust on the glass. "Does the noise ever stop, Mother?"
"It is the sound of us getting closer to the valley, Emma," Sophie said, though her own head throbbed with the relentless clatter of the tracks.
They arrived in Dunkirk as the sun set over Lake Erie. Changing from the train to the steamboat was confusing and loud, with sailors shouting. The water was rough, and the sky threatened rain. Sophie made sure her family got onto the deck. Officials checked their papers and gave them numbers.
The trip to Toledo was cold. Lake spray soaked them, and the children huddled together under a damp blanket while the engine made noise below.
In Toledo, nothing went as planned. Railroad workers stared at the crowd of immigrants, unsure what to do. There were no train cars ready for Chicago. The families waited in the muddy yard while the children cried from hunger and the wind blew in from the water.
Peder Mortenson stood near the edge of their group, his arms crossed over his chest as he watched a harried conductor argue with Elder Willie. "They don't know what to do with us, Sister Petersen," Mortenson said, his voice carrying that familiar, dry edge of pragmatism. "To them, we are a spilled sack of grain. Too much to clean up, and not worth the effort to save."
Sophie adjusted Otto on her hip, her back screaming from the constant strain. "They cannot simply leave us here."
"They can do whatever they please with people who don't speak the language and have no place to go," Mortenson replied, nodding toward a group of local men who were gathered near a warehouse, watching the Saints with narrowed eyes. "This isn't Denmark. There is no king here to ensure the peace. Only the coin and the iron."
They rode in freight cars across Ohio and Indiana. The air smelled of animals and grain dust. There were no windows, only small cracks where some light came in. Sophie sat on the floor with her family. By the time they reached Chicago, the children were pale and covered in soot. They hardly looked like themselves anymore.
Chicago was large and busy at the edge of the prairie. The conductor told them to get off the train onto a cobblestone street by the rail yards. There was no shelter and no instructions. The train left, and five hundred people stood in the dark with their belongings. Piano music played from nearby saloons, and horses passed by, but the Saints only felt the cold stones under their feet and the darkness around them.
"We cannot stay here," Marianne said, her voice rising toward a sob as she looked at the dark alleys. "The men... they are leering at us, Sophie. I can hear them laughing."
Sophie refused to give in to fear. She stood up and began giving instructions. "Peter, help Marianne with her bundle. Emma, hold Anne's hand. We'll find a place. Brother Willie and the others are out looking now."
They walked for hours along the waterfront until someone showed them to a warehouse. It was large, cold, and smelled bad. There was no heat or straw, only rough boards on the floor. Sophie laid her shawl down for the children, pulled them close, and sat with her back against a beam.
Sophie slept lightly, waking often to the sound of boots outside. Then came shouting and drunken laughter. A rock hit the side of the warehouse, and glass broke somewhere above, falling into the room.
"Mormons!" a voice roared from outside, thick with liquor and malice. "Get out of our city, you filth! We’ll burn you out if you don’t leave now!"
Inside the warehouse, people whispered prayers and children cried. Peter sat up next to Sophie, his fists tight and his eyes wide with fear. She put her arm around him. Outside, men shouted threats and threw things at the doors. Smoke came in through the broken window. Sophie wondered if Zion would be any kinder than the place they had left.
"Will they hurt us, Mother?" Peter whispered, his voice trembling against her shoulder.
Sophie looked toward the door, shadows of men passing the cracks in the wood. She thought of Levi Savage's warning in New York, about the wind that didn't ask for faith. This was that wind. "No, Peter. They're just men with darkness in them. We're under the Lord's protection. Close your eyes and think of the mountains."
The rest of the night was quiet, but Sophie could not sleep. In the morning, gray light showed her children's faces, dirty with soot. They were alive, but the journey was wearing them down.
The last part of the trip to Iowa City took three different trains, each one less reliable than the last. They waited for hours on the tracks in sun-heated cars. There was no food or water until Sophie traded a lace collar from her wedding dress for bread and a bucket of water at a stop in a cornfield. She felt like she was giving up part of her past to keep her family going.
When they reached Iowa City, Sophie, Marianne, and the children stepped out of the last car, their feet sinking into the mud. To the west, there were no more trains or tracks, only open sky and the sound of hammers from Clark's Mill.
Sophie was very tired, but seeing her children standing in the Iowa mud made her feel a little stronger. The train had brought them across the country. The journey had been hard, but they were still standing.
She took Otto from Peter and looked ahead at the buildings, deciding where to go next. She did not look back at the train. She looked west toward the setting sun and quietly thanked God that her family was safe.
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