The Blessed (9 page)

“Thirsty, but not hungry. At least for cake, right?” Lacey smiled down at Rachel, who looked up at her and nodded seriously with no answering smile. Tears were gathering in the little girl’s eyes and her lip was trembling. Lacey dropped the dipper down into the bucket and knelt in front of Rachel. “What’s the matter, sweetie?”

“Have they come to take me away?”

Lacey gathered the child close to her. “No, of course not. Why would you ever think that?”

“Papa’s mad at me.” Rachel whispered the words against Lacey’s shoulder.

Lacey stroked her head. “Papa’s mad at everybody right now.”

“But I’m not really his, am I?”

Lacey leaned back to look at the child’s face. “What do you mean, not his?”

“Jimmy told me so last week after church. He said that I don’t belong here. That nobody knows where I belong.” Rachel hesitated and then rushed on. “He said that you didn’t belong here either. That Papa was sinning. And that a preacher’s not supposed to sin. He’s supposed to get rid of sin.” Her words came out all in a spill as if they’d been building up inside her and now had to burst out like a stream of water breaking through a mud dam.

Jimmy was Miss Sadie Rose’s youngest, two years older than Rachel. The boy didn’t know how to behave. Nearly every Sunday Lacey was nigh on ready to tweak his ear and teach him a few manners. She would have done more than tweak his ear if he’d been in front of her right at that moment, but she supposed he was just repeating what he’d heard from Sadie Rose and Deacon Crutcher. She held back a sigh. There was no way she could tweak their ears and make them stop talking. She’d just have to stand between them and Rachel.

She put her hands on Rachel’s shoulders and looked her straight in the eye. “Now you listen to me and you listen good. It’s my words that matter. Mine and the ones you remember Miss Mona telling you and the ones the good Lord puts in our hearts. You belong with me. You will always belong with me.”

“Like you belonged to your mama?”

“The very same,” Lacey said.

“But your mama left.” Again Rachel’s blue eyes brimmed with tears.

“I still belong to her. She’s watching over me from heaven now.”

“The way Mama is watching over us?” A couple of tears trickled out of the little girl’s eyes to slide down her cheeks.

Lacey mashed her mouth together and blinked hard to keep back the threat of answering tears. Getting all weepy wasn’t going to help Rachel one bit. Better to be strong like her mama and Miss Mona. “They’re probably standing side by side holding hands watching us this very minute.”

Rachel grabbed Lacey’s apron front and pulled on it until the tie around Lacey’s neck dug into her skin. The child looked almost frantic. “I don’t want you to go to heaven to be with them. Promise you’ll stay here.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” Lacey pulled Rachel close in a hug again.

She wanted to keep holding her and holding her, but the preacher was yelling from the porch. “Lacey, bring on out that water. A man could die of thirst.”

Lacey leaned back and wiped off Rachel’s face with the hem of her apron. “I’ll tell you two Maddie stories after I take them their water.”

Rachel tried to smile, but it sort of slid off her face without sticking. “I like Maddie stories, Lacey. But I’d trade them for Papa not being mad at us.”

Lacey swallowed down another sigh as she ran her hand down Rachel’s cheek and stood up. “Some things aren’t so easy to change, but things will get better. I know they will. But you don’t have to worry about those men in the funny hats. They’ve just come to sell us seed for our garden. When they go on down the road, we’ll dig up a row out by the onions and plant some of their beans.”

Rachel climbed up in the rocking chair and held her Maddie doll close while Lacey carried the water out to the porch. The child still looked worried as Lacey pushed open the door and stepped out on the porch where Preacher Palmer was asking, “So it was your Mother Ann, this woman you say is the second coming of Christ, that told you to live celibate lives as sisters and brothers?”

“Yea, that is the way of the Believer. Man and wife relationships cause too much stress and are the reason for much sin in the world,” the man named Forrest said.

“I can’t disagree with that,” the preacher said. His eyes settled on Lacey as if she were offering him an apple off that tree in the Garden of Eden instead of just a glass of water.

She wanted to remind him that it hadn’t been her idea to get married, but what good would that do? If it was a sin for them to be wed, it was a sin they’d committed and there wasn’t any way out of it. It didn’t matter what these Shaker men told him. It didn’t matter what Sadie Rose and Deacon Crutcher said. The words of that old preacher, Reverend Williams, echoed in her ears.
Till death do you part.
Those were the words that mattered.

She took the packet of bean seeds the young Shaker handed up to her when she gave him the glass of water and thanked him kindly. Then she left them to argue what couldn’t be argued while she went back through the house with Rachel trailing after her. She let Rachel hold the seeds while she got the hoe off the fence and dug up the ground.

The dirt was dark and rich as she turned it over. Rachel giggled when pink fishing worms crawled out onto her hands. The sun was warm on their backs and dandelions bloomed on the edges of the worked ground.

“See. This is good,” she heard Miss Mona whispering down at her, and she remembered the sound of her mother’s laughter as they splashed in the creek doing their spring dance. She didn’t have the first reason to worry about whatever those Shaker men and the preacher were talking about out on the porch. If they convinced the preacher he ought to be celibate, then she wouldn’t have to worry about the summer.

Even so, a niggling worry was waking inside her. She shook it away. Preacher Palmer couldn’t be thinking of turning Shaker. Not the ordained preacher of the Ebenezer church.

9

At the Shaker village, Isaac entered a different world. A world where the only loud voices he heard were those singing worship songs. A world where he didn’t have to make any decisions. He only had to obey the bells that signaled the times for eating and sleep and work duties that were assigned by the elders.

Isaac stepped willingly into the Shaker cocoon. It wasn’t like he was actually one of the odd people passing him on the village walkways. So what if he was answering to Brother Isaac and blending in with the other brothers in like clothes and with his hair chopped across the front and back Shaker style. Alike as trees on the horizon, some short and some tall but bedecked in the same green leaves. Yet at times he felt like a tree split by lightning and standing sparse and broken among all the other trees so peacefully lifting their limbs toward the sun.

Even so, he had the Shaker clothes to wear, a Shaker roof over his head, and a Shaker bed to lie down in when night fell and the bell indicated time to retire. While his feet hung off the end of the narrow bed that was little more than a cot, it was still better than an alley doorway or a hole dug out under the docks. It was good to be clean again and to have his stomach full. It was good to get up from bed in the morning when the rising bell rang with a task to do. Something besides hiding in the shadows and wishing for what could no longer be.

He couldn’t go west. Elder Homer said that Isaac’s desire to put what he wanted over every other consideration was the reason for the trouble in his life. The elder had taken Isaac aside the morning after Brother Asa brought him into the village to hear his story, to determine if he was sincere in repenting his wrongs, and to decide how Isaac would begin his journey in the Shaker village. Isaac would have preferred to do his talking to Brother Asa instead of the stern old elder, but Elder Homer said such could not be.

“It is not our Brother Asa’s duty to guide the novitiates. His gifts lie in bearing the odious duty of trading with the world, and while we need such, those exposed much to the world lack the spiritual purity to hear the confessions of young Believers.”

No smile softened the elder’s face as he spoke, and Isaac couldn’t imagine him laughing about anything, but at the same time his sternness was tempered by a kind light in his eyes as he studied Isaac.

After a minute, Isaac said, “What do you want to know?”

“Naught but the truth, my brother. If you have sin in your life, it is best not to let it hide in your heart where it can fester and spread darkness on your soul. Here at Harmony Hill we believe peace comes from confession, for how can our Father God forgive us if we refuse to admit our wrongs?”

Isaac stared down at his hand, newly bandaged by the sister doctor Brother Asa had taken him to after breakfast. She’d cleansed the wound of the dirt and infection with a bubbling potion. Now the elder wished to cleanse his heart.

Isaac looked up at the man, who had to be in his seventies. “You speak all your sins?” he asked.

“All that we recognize, and we continually pray to recognize more as we move toward a perfect life here in our village. Such is not easy to obtain, but with each sin we surrender and each gift of the spirit we accept, we step nearer that center of perfection.”

“I am far from perfect,” Isaac said.

“As all of us are when we begin our journey.” The elder combed his fingers through his gray beard.

Isaac looked down, but even with his eyes lowered, he could feel the elder’s sharp eyes probing him for any crack he might pry open to peer inside Isaac’s soul. Isaac decided it was best to be honest. “I have done much wrong.”

“Those words are a good beginning, but you must not speak only in general terms. Each wrong must be examined and brought out into the light as you determine to leave it behind and move forward along the true way here in our village.”

The elder paused a moment, but when Isaac remained silent, he went on. “But you must also know that although we are separate from the world here in our village, we are nevertheless subject to the laws of the land even as the Christ told his followers they were as well, when he walked among men here on the earth. The same was true with our Mother Ann. If you have committed some illegal act in the eyes of the world, my brother, you must admit responsibility for that crime and accept the punishments accorded for such.” His voice held no condemnation. It was easy to tell he’d heard many confessions of wrong without allowing his heart to be burdened down by the sins of others.

Isaac looked up and met the man’s eyes. “I have broken no laws of the land. My wrongs were against the ones I loved most. Taking my wife from her family to a place where she got sick and died. All because of what I wanted with no consideration of her needs.”

“Selfish desires can wreak much havoc in our lives and the lives of others.” Elder Homer nodded and stroked his beard again. “But continue. No wrong is too small to speak. Each uncharitable thought. Each poorly performed duty. Each lust after ways of the world. Only spoken confessions can be forgiven.”

“That might take awhile,” Isaac said.

Elder Homer’s lips turned up in a slight smile. “Each moment of time is a gift and a treasure to be wisely used, for we have none to waste. There is work to be done, but the first task a man must do is make his spirit right within him so that the work he does will shine with the purity of the hands that performed it.”

“Where should I start?” The idea of listing every sin he’d ever committed seemed as impossible as counting the hornets storming out of a hornets’ nest when all a man wanted to do was run from them.

“At your first memories of doing wrong.”

Who could even remember every wrong thought he’d had or deed he’d done? And even if he could, such small slights seemed inconsequential compared to being the reason for Ella’s death. That seemed enough to admit. But if the old Shaker elder wanted a confession in exchange for the breakfast that filled Isaac’s stomach, Isaac could speak the words.

“When a child, I didn’t always listen to my mother. I threw a rock once and hit my sister. I told lies. I shot a red bird for no reason except to see if I could hit it.”

As Isaac talked, little sins kept rising up in his head like bubbles in a pan of boiling water. Things he hadn’t thought about for years, but that had poked his conscience with guilt when he’d done them. Elder Homer’s chin drooped down on his chest and his folded hands stayed motionless on his long beard. He looked like he might be dozing, but Isaac kept talking. If the man wanted sins, Isaac could come up with sins.

Isaac rattled on with this or that wrong. The elder kept his eyes closed and his hands folded. The house was quiet. They were enclosed in a small room on the first floor of the large three-story building. Now and again a banging of pots rose up from the kitchen area deep in the house, but it was muffled and barely noticeable over the sound of Isaac’s voice. He wondered how many childhood sins he should recount before moving on to more recent wrongs. He was barely listening to his own words until he said, “I hated my father when he died.”

Isaac’s voice trailed off to nothing as his words echoed in his ears. Elder Homer opened his eyes and looked at Isaac but didn’t speak.

Isaac tried to back away from what he’d said. “I mean I hated it when my father died.”

“That’s not what you said,” the elder said quietly. “But either way you’ve admitted the wrong of it. And have been forgiven. Are there more?”

The elder slipped his eyes toward the window as though to check on the progress of the sun toward noon. He shifted a bit in his chair and then once more assumed his posture of deep listening or perhaps sleep. Isaac had no desire to trot out more sins of his younger days or to walk through the years with the McElroys when many sinful thoughts had bedeviled him. Including the one of hating his father for dying.

He hadn’t hated his father. He’d loved him so much his heart swelled to fill up his chest when he was with him. He wanted to be just like him, with the smile that won friends before a word was spoken, with the courage to chase his dreams even when Isaac’s mother worried those journeys might mean not enough food on the table for his family, with the power to never let that happen. He’d been strong and invincible to Isaac.

Then the boiler on the steamboat had blown and his father hadn’t been strong enough. He’d left Isaac cold and alone on the riverbank while angry talk circulated among the survivors that the steamboat valves were tied down and hams thrown into the boiler fire to increase the heat. The new owners had a bet with another steamboat on the fastest time down the river. Isaac’s father was one of the new owners. He’d gone down below the deck to check on the boilers. He would have wanted to win. He always wanted to win.

“Coming out on top, son. That’s the thing,” he’d often told Isaac. “Doesn’t matter where you start so long as you come out on top.”

He wouldn’t think Isaac was on top of anything, sitting there with the old Shaker nodding off to sleep while he tried to think of which sin to admit next. “No need admitting anything,” his father would have said. “Not even to the good Lord.”

If Isaac’s mother heard that, she always made sure to add that the good Lord already knew everything anyway. If that was true and Mrs. McElroy’s Bible had echoed Isaac’s mother’s words, then it hardly seemed necessary to spend a morning of sunshine repeating them all again for the Lord to hear by way of the elder’s ears.

But there was always a price to pay for anything in life, and Isaac was willing to go along with the Shaker way in order to put his feet under their table for a few weeks. So he skipped right past half his growing up years and didn’t mention again his blame for Ella’s death and simply said, “I often speak without proper thought and my words sound wrong.”

Elder Homer opened his eyes and looked long at Isaac as if expecting more, so Isaac added without proper thought, “And I don’t pray as much as I should.”

“Did you not pray when your wife of the world fell ill?”

Isaac looked down at his hands. “Those prayers weren’t heard.”

“All prayers are heard, my brother. Not all are answered as we think they should be, but we must trust in the wisdom of the Father God who may have been using this sorrow to show you the error of your ways and the evils of the world and that is why you now sit here with me.”

“A just God would have carried me away with the fever instead of my wife.”

“God’s justice is not our justice. Such we cannot understand.” The elder stood up and leaned on the table in front of him as though he needed to give his legs a moment to accustom to standing.

“I don’t understand much of anything,” Isaac admitted as he scrambled to his feet. He didn’t think he should be sitting if the old elder was standing.

“Yea, that is true for many who come among us. You have much to learn, and here you will have ample opportunity to practice the grace of prayer and thoughtful speaking. It is good you have come to be part of our family here at Harmony Hill.” The elder’s lips curled up a bit in a smile. Nothing like Brother Asa’s cheerful acceptance of Isaac as he was—hungry, dirty, and friendless. But nevertheless a smile of acceptance.

“I will try to do as you say,” Isaac said.

“You will not always be successful, my brother. But when you fail, your spirit will be cleansed by confession.”

“To you?”

“Yea, but not as this has been. We have many new converts. There would not be enough hours in the day to hear the confessions one brother at a time. We will meet in a group with all given the opportunity to rid their souls of sin. Your guide into the Believer’s life will tell you when.”

“My guide?”

“Yea, each novitiate must be taught the ways of the Believer. And guided in the proper performance of your duties. Come. Brother Verne will be waiting in the hallway to start you in your assigned duties. Planting today, I would surmise, since the sun has dried the fields and it is necessary to get the crops in the ground in a timely manner. We depend on our harvest and the work of our hands.” The elder held up large hands that had surely once been strong and able, but now their wrinkled skin was covered with age spots and some of his fingers misshapen with arthritic knots. “Hands to work and hearts to God. With that to guide you, you will do well.”

Isaac followed the elder out into the hallway and down the east stairway. A brother was always to use the east doors and stairways while the sisters used those on the west of whatever building they were entering. Brother Asa had made sure he knew that the night before.

“There are many rules,” Asa had said after he told Isaac to step on the stairs with his right foot first. “It is a way to feel joined and in union with all your brothers in discipline and service. In time the rules disappear.”

“You mean you no longer have to do things a certain way?” Isaac asked.

“Nay, instead you will no longer note them as rules but only as part of your Shaker life.”

“Is there punishment if you forget the rules and step with the wrong foot first or go in the wrong door?”