Sophie's Journey - Chapter 15 - The Danish Saints

 

        

Sophie's Journey - Chapter 15

The Danish Saints

The Iowa morning was hot and heavy, the kind of humidity that wraps around you like a wool blanket. Sophie stood by Handcart No. 42 at Clark's Mill, watching the other Saints make their final preparations. The air smelled of wood smoke and canvas tents.

All around her, people spoke in the language she had grown up with, their voices rising and falling like a familiar song. She watched the dust float in the sunlight that came through the trees, and she wondered what lay ahead.

The geography of their faith had changed. What had once been stone churches and settled homes was now just tents and timber, a temporary camp on the edge of the frontier. But Sophie knew that faith isn't about buildings or geography. It's about what you carry in your heart. She gripped the handle of the handcart and said a silent prayer. Whatever came next, she would face it with the same courage that had brought her this far.

They were separating them again. The clerks had their lists and their efficient little groups, but to the Danish Saints, it felt like their lives were being broken into even smaller pieces. They had found each other, drawn together by the sound of their own language. There were five hundred souls in this company, but the Danes kept to their own, a little island of Danish in a sea of English.

It was a comfort for Sophie to pray in words she understood, to hear her own tongue in the voices around her. But it also reminded her how alone they were. The leaders had the maps and the authority. They spoke English. The Danish families followed where they pointed, not always knowing where they were going.

Sophie held onto the sound of her mother's language like a lifeline. It was all she had left of her now.

"Ninety-three of us," Peder said, coming up beside her. He walked with a limp, favoring his left side. His face showed the weariness they all felt. He wiped his forehead with his hand, leaving a dark streak of dirt behind. "Twenty handcarts and five tents for nearly a hundred people. The Brethren have their own kind of math, Sophie. They figure we don't need room to breathe, just room to endure."

Sophie looked at the people gathered near their carts. Most of them were women. That was the reality of their group from Denmark. Twelve women and only four men are in her tent assignment. "It is the math of survival," she said. "The cholera took the men, and the sea took the rest."

"And now the handcarts will take what remains," Peder said quietly. He kept his voice low so the children wouldn't hear. He pointed at the line of carts, their green wood already weeping sap in the hot Iowa sun. "Look at them. They're built for a Sunday walk in the park, not for crossing a continent. We're mostly widows and broken families, Sophie. Not frontiersmen."

Sophie tightened the knot on her cart's canvas cover. Her fingers were numb from the morning's work. "We have our testimonies," she said. "That's what the missionaries promised would carry us when our legs gave out. Strength isn't just in the body, Peder. It's in the spirit, too."

Peder laughed, but it wasn't a happy sound. "The spirit can't haul a hundred pounds of flour through the mud," he said. "We're short on men, so the women and boys will have to do the heavy lifting. You can't pray a mountain flat, Sophie. It takes muscle and bone."

He turned and walked away, his shoulders hunched. Sophie watched him go. She knew he was right. She looked at her children. Peter was trying to walk like the teamsters, puffing out his chest to look older than ten. Emma sat in the grass, braiding clover into a crown for little Anne. Otto was asleep under the cart, his small chest rising and falling. It was the only peaceful thing in the camp.

Marianne came toward them, her face pale. Her eyes kept darting around, like she was looking for an escape. "They're saying we'll be separated by language, Sophie, that we'll walk in our own line. Is that because we're special, or because we're a burden?"

"Neither," Sophie said. "It's because they need us to understand the orders. If we stick together, we can help each other. We can share the translating and the pulling."

Marianne stared at the handcart. Her face showed the fear she was trying to hide. "I'm not like you, Sophie. I don't have your strength. My father was a tailor. He worked with silk and fine wool, not with dragging wooden carts across the wilderness. When I look at that cart, I don't see a path to Zion. I see a cage on wheels."

"It is only a cage if you refuse to move it," Sophie replied, her voice softened by a flicker of pity she tried to suppress. "The children are watching us, Marianne. They need to see that we are not afraid of the wood. It is just hickory and ash. It is not our master."

She walked to the front of her handcart and took hold of the pull-bar. The wood was smooth and damp. She gripped it tight, her knuckles white, and began to pull. The wheels groaned as they rolled through the mud. The sound went right through her bones. It was heavy. Heavier than it looked when the men built it. She understood now what Peder meant. The math was worse than she thought.

Near the fire, a group of Danish men were talking. Their voices rose and fell as they argued about the flour and the tents. Sophie could only catch some of what they said. Their faces showed the strain of men being asked to do something impossible.

Among them stood a young man named Niels. His face was bright with a feverish kind of zeal. Sophie found it more frightening than Peder's cynicism.

"The Lord will provide!" Niels shouted, his voice cracking with the effort of conviction. "Did He not part the Red Sea for the Israelites? Will He not smooth the path for the Saints of the latter days? We must not let doubt be the rust that destroys us!"

The older men nodded, but their eyes showed doubt. They were farmers and laborers, men who had spent their lives working the soil. They knew that the Lord usually helps those who help themselves, through strong backs and sharp tools. The handcarts were neither of those things.

Sophie went back to her work. She moved with care, organizing the cart's contents. She put the rations box and cooking pot near the axle, then stacked the spare clothes and bedding on top. It made a shaky tower of everything they owned. She wrapped her Danish hymnal, with its precious lock of hair, in oilcloth and tucked it in the center, safe from the damp. It was the heart of the cart, a link to the world they were leaving and a promise of the one they were looking for.

As the afternoon went on, the split in the camp grew more obvious. The English Saints moved differently. Their laughter was louder. They could talk directly to Elder Willie and the captains, and that gave them confidence.

The Danes stood on the edges, watching. They were silent witnesses to something they could only partly understand. The language barrier was like a wall, thick as the forest around them. It made the Danish group feel like a small island in a big, rising sea.

"Mother, let me help," Peter said, coming to stand beside her as she struggled with a particularly heavy sack. He reached out his small, dirt-streaked hands and gripped the side of the cart, his jaw set in a line that reminded her painfully of his father.

"You are a good boy, Peter," Sophie said, her hand resting briefly on his head. "But you must save your strength for the trail. We have many miles before us, and the cart will feel heavier tomorrow than it does today."

"I am strong," he insisted, his eyes searching hers for a validation she wasn't sure she could give. "I watched the men at the mill. I know how to grease the axles and how to balance the load. I will not let you pull it alone."

Sophie turned away so he wouldn't see the tears in her eyes. She looked toward the horizon. The sun was going down behind the trees, casting long shadows across the mill. Around her, the camp was changing. Carts lined up in a long row, pointing west. They were getting ready to leave.

Later that evening, after the children had eaten, Sophie sat on the cart. The camp had settled into a restless quiet. She could hear the fires crackling and voices speaking in a language she didn't understand. She looked at the other Danish women, the widows and mothers with too many children and not enough strength. She saw the same stubborn determination in their faces that she felt in her own bones.

They were the ones who would carry the weight of the company. Not the captains with their maps, and not the missionaries with their promises, but the women who would harness themselves to the carts and pull their legacies across the dust and the rock. The arithmetic of exhaustion was simple. They were tired, and it showed in the callouses on their hands and the lines around their eyes.

Sophie reached down and touched the pull-bar. The wood was still damp with sap. The cart was alive in a way, fragile and protesting. It would either carry them to the valley or become their grave marker in the wilderness. She thought of the jasmine back in Gentofte, how sweet it smelled in summer. For a moment, the memory was so strong she could almost feel the cool grass beneath her feet.

Then a child cried out in the next tent, a sharp, thin sound that broke the spell. Sophie stood up, her back aching with a dull, persistent throb that she knew would become her constant companion in the weeks to come. 

She looked west. The Danish group was ready, as ready as faith and preparation could make them. The trail waited in the dark.

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