The Innocent (29 page)

“You mentioned a girl.”

“Did I?” She gave a nervous little laugh while her fingers played over her skirt again. “I don’t recall what I said.”

Mitchell let the silence build between them, but her guard was up now. She wasn’t going to say any more about any girl
or anything else without weighing every word first. Finally he said, “I see. Well, I won’t take up any more of your time, Mrs. Whitlow.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t help you out, but Curt doesn’t always tell me where he’s going.” She tried a smile, but it didn’t quite work.

“I understand.” Something was bothering the woman, but he couldn’t force her to tell him whatever it was. “If you need anything while Curt’s away, you send one of your boys after me.”

He was halfway across the yard when she came out to the edge of the porch and stopped him. “Sheriff?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He turned around. “Is there something I can do for you now?”

She hesitated, then pushed out the words. “There is something.” In the dim light he could see her moistening her lips.

He stepped back toward her. “I’ll help if I can.”

She took hold of the porch post as though needing support. “The truth is, Sheriff, I am a little worried about Curt. I don’t want the children to know, but Dr. Baker was by here earlier. He said Curt was supposed to let him treat his arm today. You know, where that dog bit him. Curt is away a lot on business.” She swallowed as though the word “business” put a bad taste in her mouth she had to get rid of before she could say anything else. “But he was concerned about his arm. It’s healing up, but I don’t think he would have forgotten that he was supposed to see the doctor to check on it. I’m probably worried for no reason, but . . .”

“Yes, ma’am, but to be sure, I’ll check around for you.”

She rubbed her hands up and down the post. “You will be discreet, won’t you?”

“Nobody will ever have to know about this conversation but the two of us. Not even Mr. Whitlow.”

“Thank you, Sheriff Brodie.” She let out a relieved breath. “I’ve heard you’re a man a person can trust.”

“I do what I can, ma’am.”

That was what he had told the mother of the two boys earlier that afternoon. He’d said the same thing often during the war. But sometimes it hadn’t been enough. The feeling was growing inside him that maybe it wouldn’t be enough here either.

You can with the Lord’s might
. His mother used to tell him that whenever he complained about something being hard to do. His father’s advice had been less holy and more down to earth.
If
you come up on a rock too big to move,
take a pickax to it. Break it down to a
size you can move.

As he headed toward the boardinghouse, he could see his mother smiling at his father and saying, “Sometimes the Lord helps you swing that pickax.”

Mitchell looked up at the stars coming out. Two days in a row he was finishing the day with the stars and thinking about his mother. And for the second night in a row a prayer rose up from his heart for Carlyn. For himself. Even for the dog. Hadn’t his mother always told him that no prayer was too small for God? Or too big.

He wondered when he’d stepped away from that little-boy belief in prayer. Maybe the war had caused that. Not that he didn’t pray when the cannons started firing. Desperate prayers for courage in the face of battle. But then he’d left the prayers on the battlefield. He didn’t need God once the guns went silent. He could handle the rest of the times. But maybe he couldn’t. Maybe he did need the Lord’s might behind his swing of the pickax to break up the rocks in his path.

“Just point me down the right road so I can find out the things I need to know.” He whispered the words.

That little-boy hope was in his heart as he stepped up on Mrs. Snowden’s back porch. But no Asher appeared out of the night or stood to meet him when he went through the door.

Mrs. Snowden looked around from washing dishes. Her face fell when she saw he was alone. “You didn’t find him.”

“Not yet.”

She shook her head a little as she dried her hands on her apron and lifted his supper out of the warming oven. “You think it’s wrong to pray for a dog, Sheriff?”

“I hope not, Mrs. Snowden. I sincerely hope not.”

26

The confessions and apologies Carlyn rehearsed on the walk back from the woods became naught but a stuttering mumble when she faced Sister Edna at the Gathering Family House.

Without a word, Carlyn followed her into the room where the sister listened to confessions. Sister Edna settled behind her writing desk and waited for Carlyn to take down a chair from the pegs to sit across from her. Still she did not speak. The silence thumped against Carlyn’s ears, but she saw no reason to step into more trouble with careless words.

At last Sister Edna broke the silence. “What have you to say for yourself?” In spite of the scowl that darkened the sister’s face, her voice lacked its usual fire. She seemed weary of the continual necessity to upbraid Carlyn.

Carlyn answered with the truth instead of her practiced words. “I needed time alone. To mourn the true knowledge of the death of my husband.”

“We have no marital ties here. Have you not read the book I gave you days ago?” She tapped the book on the desk, then
held it up so Carlyn could see the title,
The Principles and Practices of a People Called the
Shakers
. “On these pages you find the rules we must adhere to in order for our Society to prosper. The directives are written so even those of the world can understand.”

“I am reading the book as you instructed, but I have not finished it.”

“Or obviously paid attention to anything you have already read.” Sister Edna let the book fall open. She didn’t have to riffle through the pages to find the passage she sought. “Listen well while I read you principle number eight. ‘A united interest in all things in their general order; but none are required to come into it, except as a matter of choice.’” Sister Edna peered up at Carlyn. “You did choose to come among us, did you not?”

“Yea,” Carlyn answered weakly.

Sister Edna began reading again. “‘For this order is not a principle; but is the result of mutual love and unity of spirits; and cannot be supported where the selfish relations of husband, wife, and children exist. This order is the greatest and clearest demonstration of practical love. “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.”’” Again she looked up. “That is the Christ speaking.”

“I am familiar with that verse,” Carlyn said.

“But the question is, do you practice it? Leaving your duty for your sisters to perform in your absence is not a demonstration of practical love. Item four states that ‘to be a proper Shaker, one should be diligent in business serving the Lord. All—’” She poked the page and repeated, “‘All labor with their hands according to their strength and abilities; all are industrious, but not slavish. Idleness is the parent of want.’”

“I will work tomorrow.” Carlyn tried to speak with as much sincerity as she could muster, but the words lacked conviction even to her own ears. She would work. She did not mind working, but now her spirit was tired. Too much had happened in the last few days.

The same strain she was feeling seemed to be reflected on Sister Edna’s face even though she was saying the expected Shaker words. The woman smoothed her hand over the book’s page. “A proper Shaker knows her hands are to be devoted to work every day except the Sabbath.”

“Yea, if one is able, but today sadness overwhelmed me. Such as was overcoming you this morning.”

“A fleeting worry.” Sister Edna threw out her hand in dismissal of Carlyn’s words. “Mother Ann’s teachings show us that happiness does not so much depend on circumstances as we think. Within our souls the foundations must abide.”

“Do you have those foundations?” Carlyn asked.

“I did.” She quickly changed her words. “I do.” She stared down at the book. “I have kept the rules.”

For a minute Carlyn thought Sister Edna was going to read more of those rules to point out Carlyn’s wrongs, but instead she stared at the pages without speaking. Finally Carlyn said, “But others have not.”

Sister Edna looked up. “You have not.” Her voice regained its stern timbre.

“Yea, I have not.” Carlyn knew what was expected. To bow her head and be repentant. At times she’d done that, but now an argument rose within her. “Rules do not open the gates of heaven, and following every rule in your book or anyone’s book does not allow you through those gates. Faith in the Lord is what is needed.”

“You dare to preach to me of faith?” Sister Edna’s eyes flared open. “I am the one leading you. Not you leading me.”

“Nay, I am not a preacher.” She cringed at the thought of being like her father, but then in her quiet way, her mother had opened up the Scripture to Carlyn better than all her father’s sermons. “You Shakers speak of the gift of being simple and yet you’ve written books of rules.”

“To ensure we live a simple life with unity of spirit.”

She told herself to bend her head and pretend to accept Sister Edna’s rules. But words bubbled up inside her and she couldn’t keep them in. “Is it not better to allow love to rule our spirits? The love of God and the love of one’s neighbor.”

“We have such love. Surely even you can see that such love is plentiful within our Society. Brotherly love. Sisterly love.”

Again she told herself to be silent. Again the words would not be denied. “Do you have that love for me, Sister Edna?”

The sister’s eyes snapped with anger and Carlyn thought the other woman was going to lie. Then a shadow passed over her face and she looked sad. “The truth is always better and necessary. You are not yet fully a Believer sister. Novitiates must earn their place in our Society.”

“And love? Must we earn love when the Lord showers it down on us so freely, deserved or not?” Carlyn leaned toward Sister Edna, willing her to listen with an open mind.

Instead the woman put her fingertips on her forehead as though Carlyn’s words pained her. “There is much you do not understand about the Shaker way.”

“Yea, there is much I do not understand about many things.”

Carlyn looked down at her hands then and gave in to the older sister. But in some deep, abiding way her words of
argument with Sister Edna put her own heart at ease. Whatever happened, she could lean on the Lord. Just as Ambrose, while he still lived, had helped her feel the love of God, now from the grave he was showing her that love was everlasting. It didn’t matter if she stepped up on the stairway with the proper foot or neglected to hang out the last load of wash on the clothesline. Such things had naught to do with the love of God. That was available to her no matter where she was.

She ran her thumb over the back of her hand. Would that be here? Would she turn from a confused novitiate to a resigned Shaker sister living by their rules not because she thought them necessary but for the more practical reasons of obtaining food and shelter? Or dare she hope another way would open? That she might once more have her own home and perhaps find love different than that only for sisters and brothers? The kind of love she’d known with Ambrose and that he had released her to find again.

The thought of the sheriff’s hand brushing her shoulder came to mind. Her cheeks warmed. She shouldn’t even be thinking about Sheriff Brodie with her husband’s last letter in her pocket. But Ambrose wanted her to reach for joy in her life. A joy she no longer believed she could find among the Shakers.

She had no doubt Sister Edna was glaring at her bent head, but the sister remained silent. Light-headed from her daylong fast, Carlyn wanted nothing more than to be out of this room, away from Sister Edna. She searched for words to appease the woman. “Whatever the fitting punishment, I will accept it and work harder in the days ahead to be a proper Shaker.”

“Empty words can come from beneath any bonnet.” Sister Edna shut the book with a snap and let her fingertips dance
up and down on the book’s cover. “Truth is what is necessary when one makes confession of one’s wrongs.”

“The truth will out.” Carlyn repeated Sister Edna’s words from that morning.

Sister Edna sniffed in a deep breath and touched her nose with her handkerchief. “Revelation of the truth is not in our hands, but Mother Ann will light our path and show us what we need to know. I fear you do not want to walk the Shaker way, Sister Carlyn.”

“I am here.”

“But will you stay?”

“The Lord gives us one day at a time. Tomorrow has not come. Who could have said on the Monday past the things that would happen before the week’s end? The fire and the loss of Brother Henry. Nor would I have ever expected a letter from a woman I never met to put to rest the unknowns about my husband’s fate in the war. We cannot know what tomorrow holds.”

“The future is not fearful when one clearly sees the path Mother Ann has laid out for us.”

Carlyn raised her head to look at Sister Edna. “Yet you seemed greatly concerned about facing the day when we awoke this morning.”

The sister flinched back from her words. “I have confessed my lack of faith in the proper way to Eldress Lilith. I trust now that Mother Ann will continue to bless our community and those of the world won’t be back to torment us.”