“This is Eldress Lilith. She will guide you once you have eaten.” Sister Annie was obviously not comfortable next to the eldress. “Eldress, this is . . . Oh my, I neglected to ask your name.” She looked even more discomfited as she rubbed her hands on her apron.
“Worry not, Sister Annie. Names are easy to come by, are they not, my young sister?” A smile touched the older woman’s lips.
Carlyn pushed an answering smile out on her lips even though the other woman’s smile did not tarry on her face. “I’m Carlyn Kearney. I live not far down the road. At least I did live there.”
The eldress lowered her eyelids for a second as though considering her answer before she asked, “And did you live there alone? Or have you come here to escape the marital snares of the world?”
“My husband has not come home from the war.”
The woman sighed. “The sins of the world fall on the innocent. We have no use for war here. Peace is what we ever seek.”
Carlyn didn’t know exactly what she was expected to say. She was beginning to feel as discomfited as Sister Annie by the eldress. “Peace sounds good.”
“So you seek the same? Peace?” The woman swept her eyes across the gun beside Carlyn’s bag and frowned. “With a firearm?”
“It’s a h-hunting gun,” Carlyn stammered in the face of the woman’s obvious disapproval. She had no idea what the woman would say if she revealed who she worried might be hunting her.
“A weapon, nonetheless.”
“Yes.” Carlyn tried to think of what else to say, but the eldress held up her hand to stop her.
Her face smoothed back into calm lines. “But it is wrong of me to question you while you hold your meal. After you have eaten, I will take you to Sister Muriel. She will find you a place should you decide to stay with us. And then we can deal with the gun and the dog.” The woman peered over at Sister Annie. “Go ahead and give the animal the biscuits you secreted in your apron pocket, Sister Annie, and then be about your duties.”
A guilty flush spread across Sister Annie’s cheeks as she pulled the biscuits from her pocket. “Yea, forgive me, Eldress, but the dog looked as hungry as his mistress.”
Asher took the offered food politely and settled down at Carlyn’s feet to eat. Sister Annie didn’t attempt to rub him with the eldress watching, but instead shoved her hands under her apron as she turned away.
“Thank you, Sister Annie.” Carlyn lifted the plate a bit. “For your kindness and the food.”
“’Tis a small thing.” Sister Annie shot a little smile over her shoulder. “Best eat it before it gets cold.”
Carlyn ate standing up. It was awkward, but she couldn’t very well sit on the ground beside Asher with the unsmiling eldress towering over her, even though the woman suggested she do so. It was all Carlyn could do to swallow the food. While the taste was fine, her throat was tight and her stomach still uneasy. She didn’t want to appear ungrateful, but there was no way she could eat all the food piled on the plate.
She sneaked a look at the woman in hopes she’d be looking away so that Carlyn could slip some of the meat to Asher. But the woman’s eyes were locked on her with too much understanding.
“Sister Annie was perhaps too generous with her dippings for you,” the eldress said.
“It is very good, but I am not accustomed to eating so much.” Carlyn ate the last of the apples and nibbled on the biscuit. “My stomach cannot hold it all.”
“While it is our custom here not to waste food by taking more than one can eat, since you did not dip out the food, I cannot fault you for not eating it all. So what you cannot eat it, you may spill out for your dog. I assume the animal is yours.”
Asher was eyeing the eldress with none of the friendliness he’d shown Sister Annie. To forestall a growl at the woman, Carlyn dropped her biscuit for him.
“Yes.” Carlyn touched the dog’s back. “He’s a very good dog.” She finished off the green beans and eyed the roast meat.
The woman looked from Asher straight at Carlyn. “He very well may be, but a Shaker animal must earn his keep and be useful. We keep no pets.”
“No dogs?” Carlyn stared at the woman, sure she misunderstood. She’d never once thought about Asher not being allowed to stay in the Shaker village. Not inside with her as he did at the house, but surely in the village under a porch or in a barn. Her stomach turned over and she willed herself not to be sick even as her hands began shaking so much that she could barely keep the plate from spilling. She’d thought the Shaker village was the Lord’s answer, but perhaps she was wrong. What was she going to do?
With a concerned frown, Eldress Lilith took the plate from Carlyn. “My sister, do you feel faint?”
“I can’t stay here without Asher.”
“Asher?” Her frown darkened.
With despair choking her, Carlyn couldn’t speak. She looked down and laid her hand on Asher, who moved closer until she could lean against him.
“It is only a dog,” the eldress said.
“But my dog.” Carlyn met her eyes with some defiance.
“I see.” The woman studied her a moment before she let out the whisper of a sigh. “Do you have someplace else you can go, my child?”
Carlyn shut her eyes and lowered her head. After a moment, she forced out her answer. “No.” Another of her mother’s lessons rose in her mind. Sometimes following the Lord’s will required sacrifice.
The woman laid her hand on Carlyn’s shoulder and her voice was not unkind. “Then is there someone in the world who will take the dog?”
7
Every morning that Mitchell Brodie woke up in the comfortable bed at Mrs. Snowden’s boardinghouse felt like a gift. The first thing he did, even before he splashed water on his face from the bowl on the washstand, was look out the window to watch daylight ease over the street below his second-story window. The town looked so peaceful with only a few people out and about.
He wanted to keep it that way. Peaceful. His town. His county. He’d spent too many months in the middle of everything but peace, with cannons booming and men who might have been his neighbors before the war shooting at him. He shot back. God help him. He shot at men across the divide between the armies. Men just like him, only fighting for the South while he fought for the North. At times, he’d wondered if anybody knew why they were shooting at one another. What were they fighting for?
“The Union.” That was what his captain said. With great conviction.
But then what were the Confederates fighting for? Captain Trowbridge had no trouble answering that question either. “Because they’re idiots.”
“And we’re not?” Mitchell looked across the pathetic fire toward the other man. It was freezing. They barely had anything to eat and the coffee had run out the day before. From the looks of the sky, it was going to snow and they faced another miserable winter in camp instead of being home with their families.
“Nobody ever likes to think he’s an idiot, Brodie. In our case, it’s the generals who are the idiots.” He laughed then and threw a few sticks on the fire. “At least the best of them. A man starts doing too much thinking, he makes a sorry soldier. We can’t be sorry soldiers. The fate of the Union depends on us.”
Mitchell had liked Captain Trowbridge. A man who could smile in any type of weather and who never asked his men to do anything he wasn’t willing to do first, including dying. He’d done that in a skirmish in the spring of 1864 at a bridge over a creek a long-legged man could almost jump across. They’d won the skirmish, but lost the heart of their unit.
But they’d finally won the war. Saved the Union. Captain Trowbridge would say it was worth it, and when Mitchell looked out at his town coming to life every morning, he could believe it.
Across the street, Billy Hogan came outside to lean against the door to his barbershop and give everybody walking past the once-over, sizing them up for haircuts and shaves.
Mitchell could use a haircut. The blasted curls were lapping his colla
r again. While he was in the army, he’d just sawed them off with his knife. It didn’t much matter how his hair looked, marching out to face cannon fire, but now he needed to consider his appearance. The people in the county expected their sheriff to look like an upstanding citizen. Especially the older ladies. The younger ladies weren’t too worried about the length of his hair. They were more concerned with his marital status. Eligible bachelors had been thinned out by the war.
With a sigh, Mitchell turned away from the window to begin his day. He never knew what might be waiting for him. Besides those anxious young women. Thinking about them brought to mind the young widow. He still had a bad taste in his mouth from the trip out to her house with Curt Whitlow. It wasn’t a good thing putting a person out of their home, especially a young woman with no family nearby.
On Friday night, Mrs. Snowden had been glad to tell him all about Carlyn Kearney. Mrs. Snowden was anything but tight-lipped about the citizens of Mercer County. Her loquaciousness was helpful at times. Not that he needed to know more about Carlyn Kearney. He didn’t. If he had to put her out of her house, the less he knew the better. But he kept seeing her facing them off, a gun in her hands and the dog by her side.
“Poor girl.” The corners of Mrs. Snowden’s mouth had turned down. She wiped a bit of sweat from her face with her apron tail after retrieving Mitchell’s supper from the stove’s warming oven. She saved his meals for him if he was delayed for supper with the stipulation he had to eat in the kitchen. She didn’t want the other boarders to see him eating at all hours and expect like treatment. She had strict meal times, but she also had an unmarried niece she managed to mention every time Mitchell took a late supper.
He had met the niece. Mrs. Snowden had seen to that. Florence. She came every Monday to help her aunt with the laundry. She wasn’t a beauty, but her face was pleasant enough. At least what he managed to see of it. The timid creature kept her head bent and her eyes away from him whenever he happened across her path. He couldn’t decide if she was embarrassed about her aunt’s matchmaking attempts or if the very sight of him terrified her.
Mitchell had no desire to coax her out of her timidity. He liked a girl with spirit, but after Hilda, he was in no hurry to bare his heart to any girl, spirited or not. And yet Carlyn Kearney kept coming into his thoughts, both the girl with the gun and the girl in tears.
So he had purposely dropped her name in front of Mrs. Snowden.
“I’m not one to gossip about folks, but that poor child has known her share of problems.”
“Oh? You mean because of her husband not coming home?” Mitchell looked up from the hash on his plate. Mrs. Snowden’s cooking might not compare to his mother’s, but it beat the army rations by a long sight. And she did make a fine apple cobbler. A generous helping of that awaited him when he finished off the hash.
“Well, that too, of course.” Mrs. Snowden poured him a cup of coffee and one for herself. That meant she had plenty to tell. She pulled another serving of the cobbler out of the warming oven and settled down across the table from him.
Mitchell waited while Mrs. Snowden took a noisy sip of her coffee. Then she surprised him by not saying anything as she stared off at the wall. She didn’t even pick up her fork to dig into her cobbler.
“Are you all right, Mrs. Snowden?” It was unlike her to be so quiet, and her face was extra red even for her. She was a heavyset woman and the heat of the kitchen kept her flushed.
She shook herself a little and turned back to him. “Oh, sorry about that, Mitchell. You speaking of Carlyn’s husband just sent my thoughts back to losing my Quentin. It’s a hard thing being a widow. Never having been married, you likely can’t understand, but when you love somebody, them being gone slices you in two.”
He had thought he was in love, but Mrs. Snowden knew nothing about that. It could be he knew nothing about that either. Even if he’d been in love, Hilda hadn’t shared those feelings.
Mrs. Snowden sighed and picked up her fork. “But a person has to go on. When my Quentin died, our boys were already grown and on their own. They might have opened their doors to me, but two women in one kitchen is nothing but a recipe for trouble. I didn’t want that for my boys’ wives. Or for me.” She laughed a little then and took a bite of the cobbler.
Mitchell dug into his dessert too. “Delicious, Mrs. Snowden. You’ve outdone yourself.”
“It’s the apples that make the pie. Florence brought me these. She picked them herself.” The woman gave him a pointed look.
“I’ll have to thank her when next I see her.” Mitchell shoveled in another bite.
“We had some fine trees on our farm, but after Quentin passed I traded the farm for this boardinghouse. Had to make my way. The one thing I knew how to do was cook and clean. And I’ve learned to put up with a bit of noise and bother from the likes of you.” With a smile, she pointed her fork toward Mitchell. Then her smile faded. “Of course, I had to leave Quentin out there on the farm, but I go now and again to tend his grave. Such can be a comfort to a widow woman, you know.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Snowden.” Mitchell put down his fork and reached across the table to touch her hand.
“Now, don’t let my sorrowful talk ruin your appetite. You go on and eat that cobbler. I was just thinking it has to be different for poor Carlyn. Not knowing, you know. Ambrose Kearney didn’t come home, but nobody knows what became of him either. They say he’s missing. What kind of word is that? Missing.” Mrs. Snowden shook her head. “What’s a woman supposed to do with that? No body. No grave. It’s like he walked away to the army and just vanished in thin air. It’s no wonder the girl is confused about whether she’s a widow or not.”
“Do you think she is?” Mitchell dug into his cobbler again.
“Well, of course she is. Ambrose Kearney was a good man and he loved his pretty little wife. The only thing that would have kept him away from her was dying. But you can understand why she hangs onto hope that, well, I don’t know what. It’s right pitiful when you think about it. She can’t go on with her life for wondering. I mean, I’m sure she wouldn’t have any trouble finding another man eager to step into Ambrose Kearney’s shoes.” Mrs. Snowden gave Mitchell a curious look. “You say you saw her today?”
“Right.” Mitchell wanted to avoid saying why.
But Mrs. Snowden guessed. “That Curt Whitlow is bothering her, ain’t he? That man. I don’t know why his wife puts up with him. But then I suppose you make your bed, you have to lie in it. Comfortable or not. And Gladys never has to count her pennies when she goes to the general store.”
Mitchell took a drink of his coffee and waited for whatever else Mrs. Snowden had to say. Once rolling, she generally kept talking until she told everything she knew about a person. This time was no different.
“Carlyn was a Wilson before she married, you know. Daughter of Reverend Wilson. Now there was a man bent on doing the Lord’s work, come what may. Went all over the countryside preaching and down in Tennessee too, I’m told. Just left his family and went. Claimed if he was doing the Lord’s work, then the Lord would take care of the rest. But I’m telling you, pretty words, spiritual or not, don’t make a very good supper. I have as much religion as the next fellow, but it appears to me the Lord gives a man a family, he expects that man to provide for them.”
“Sounds reasonable.” Mitchell finished off his cobbler and picked up his cup. “So do they live around here?”
“No, the Reverend heard there were sinners in Texas. They packed up and headed west a few years back.”
“No other family around these parts?”
“Not that I ever heard of. They showed up here after they married. Guess the Reverend heard about sinners here then.” She laughed a little at that. “Why are you asking? Is that Curt Whitlow putting her out of her house?”
“She owes him money on it,” Mitchell allowed. He’d probably already said too much, but he wanted to know about Carlyn Kearney.
“Money she ain’t go
t no way of getting.” Mrs. Snowden shook her head. “She still have that dog?”
“She has a dog.”
“I’ve heard tell it’s a vicious thing. As apt to bite you as not.”
“It didn’t bite me, but it wasn’t overly fond of Mr. Whitlow.”
Mrs. Snowden snorted. “Dog must be smarter than people say.”
Mitchell peered over the top of his coffee cup at the woman. She rarely had an ill thing to say about anyone. “Has Mr. Whitlow given you trouble?”
“Curt Whitlow gives everybody trouble. The man would sell his grandmother for a pittance to put coin in his pocket.” She stood and began gathering up the dirty dishes. “Praise the Lord, I never had to have any dealings with the man. He’s quick to loan to a person when hard times come to call.”
“But that’s good, isn’t it? To give a man a hand when he needs it?”
“I doubt he’s ever given the first man nothing. Or woman either. He just sits back and waits till things get harder and then calls in his loan. When the money’s not there, he takes over the property.” She dropped the dishes down in her dishpan with a clatter. “It’s all legal, I’m guessing. But everything that’s legal ain’t right. You know that’s true, Sheriff Brodie. At least in the Lord’s eyes.”
Mitchell took a sip of the tepid coffee. “Could be, but I better stick with the law and let the preachers figure out the rest.”
“Some things can’t none of us down here on earth figure out.” Mrs. Snowden sighed. “I’m glad I took my pappy’s advice. Neither a lender nor a borrower be. Then can’t nobody own your next dollar or leave you wanting their last dollar.”
The Innocent Page 6
