Christmas at Harmony Hill

by Ann H. Gabhart

  They settled back in the middle room of the barn. It was darker there, but she knew their faces. Now she needed to know their story. She swallowed the biscuit and ham and could not keep back the thought of her mother’s biscuits she’d imagined eating earlier. She wrapped the last biscuit in the cloth napkin and shoved it in her pocket, her appetite and any thought of laughter gone. “Tell me about Mother.”

  Beth sighed and was quiet a long moment before she began speaking, sorrow plain in her voice. “A week after she got your letter back the first of September, Jimmy got sick. At first we thought maybe he’d caught a chill playing in the creek. You remember how Jimmy loved splashing in the water. But thinking back, I believe Mother feared the worst from the very beginning. Pa had heard talk of the cholera in town. She took Jimmy in her bedroom and wouldn’t let any of us come in until she was too sick to raise her head. I had to take care of them then. I had to. Jimmy died first. Then Mother. I figured I’d go next, but the Lord spared me.”

  “Oh, Beth, our father was right. I should have been here to help you.” Heather grasped Beth’s hand as Lucas tried to hug them both.

  “You couldn’t have stopped the cholera. Nobody can do that. Pa knows that. He just can’t think straight right now what with all the dying. Can’t none of us.”

  “He’s not going to change his mind about me.” It was best to face the truth of that.

  “No,” Beth agreed. “Mother might have been able to convince him, but I can’t tell him anything. Me or the boys. But he does love the boys. Losing Simon tore him apart even before the sickness took Mother and Jimmy.”

  Lucas must have noted how Beth didn’t include herself in the circle of their father’s love. He grabbed Beth’s hand and declared, “I love you. Willie and me, we both love you.” He turned to look at Heather. “And you too. No matter what Pa says.”

  Heather touched his cheek. “You were always a tenderhearted boy. You must have taken that after our mother.”

  “He is much like her,” Beth agreed. “Willie’s more like Pa, ready to fight the world sometimes.”

  “Thirteen can be a hard age for boys,” Heather said. “They always want to be older.”

  “I’m glad he’s not.” Beth’s voice was firm. “He’d have run after Simon to the army if he’d had a few more years, but now they say the war’s the same as over. That the Yankees have won.” Beth peered over at Heather. “You were with them. So, is that true?”

  “The fighting hasn’t stopped, but so many have died and those still standing are weary of war. I have no way of knowing, but I think, I pray it will end soon.”

  “How was it? Following the army?” Beth asked.

  “Not easy. I had no idea what would happen when I left home. I just knew I wanted to be with Gideon. I guess I was lucky to get the washerwoman job since it meant I got to stay near Gideon, but I paid for it by seeing sights no girl should ever see. There were times I wondered if the Lord had tired of our sinfulness and was bringing down a flood of artillery to wipe us out. But then the guns would stop firing and Gideon would come back in one piece and life went on with more trousers to wash.”

  Heather paused, but neither Beth nor Lucas spoke. So she went on. “Then I got in the family way and Gideon didn’t want our baby born on a battlefield.”

  Beth reached over to touch the swell of Heather’s stomach. “When is your time of confinement?”

  “Late December as near as I can figure.”

  “A Christmas baby,” Lucas spoke up.

  “Perhaps.” A smile tugged at Heather’s lips, but it didn’t last. She clutched her hands in her lap and looked toward her sister. “What am I going to do, Beth? I came home to Mother and now she’s gone.”

  “She didn’t forget you at the end.” Beth pulled something out of her pocket. The paper captured the scant light in the barn. “I suppose she had a prescience of things to come. She thought you might come home, so when she took sick, she wrote this to you.”

  Heather reached for it and held it to her heart. Her mother’s last thoughts of her. Tears pushed at her eyes, but she held them in. Lucas and Beth had seen enough tears. After a moment she opened the page, but she could only see the shape of the letter. “I have no light to read the words.”

  “You’ll have to wait until morning,” Beth said. “I couldn’t take the chance of Pa seeing us cross the yard with a lantern. But Mother bade me read it. I can tell you what it says if you want.”

  “Do.” Heather folded the letter and held it to her cheek as though she could absorb the written words while Beth spoke them aloud.

  “She writes that if you have a need that cannot be met here at home, to go to Aunt Sophrena.”

  “Aunt Sophrena?” Heather frowned.

  “You remember Mother speaking of her, don’t you? Our grandfather’s younger sister. Sophrena. Such a pretty name that I’ve always wondered about her.”

  “But we’ve never met her. She went to the Shakers before I was born.” Why would her mother pick that aunt? There were other family members. None close by, but neither was the Shaker village. That was in the next county.

  “True enough, but she wrote to Mother last year before Christmas and Mother wrote back. Pa didn’t like it. He says those Shaker people only pretend to be upright and holy and no telling what goes on there.” Beth looked at Lucas, whose head was drooping. “I should have left Lucas in bed.”

  “I’m so glad you didn’t.” Heather eased the boy’s head over into her lap and stroked his hair. “Touching him thus has been reward enough for my long walk home even if I must leave straightway in the morning.”

  “I wish it could be otherwise, but Pa won’t relent. Before light you must go into the woods. I’ll send Willie out with more food when he comes out to milk the cow. Then you’ll have to go to Perry’s house.”

  “Are you talking about Perry Wilson? Is that your fellow?” Heather remembered a kid always making a pest of himself.

  As if Beth guessed her thoughts, she said, “He’s grown up the same as me. You remember where his house is, don’t you?”

  “I remember.”

  “Good. He’ll take you to the Shaker village.”

  Beth had it all figured out. Arranged and decided, but Heather wasn’t as sure. “I can’t go live among the Shakers. I’m married with child. That’s against their beliefs.”

  “After Mother passed, I read Aunt Sophrena’s letters. She has a kind spirit. And I have heard the same said about the Shakers by others. They might have odd ways, but they don’t turn away those in need.”

  “But I can’t give up Gideon.”

  “You’ve already given him up until the war is over, have you not? When he comes home, then you can leave the Shakers and go with him.”

  Heather stared at Beth. Even in the dim light, she could see the set of her jaw. “You’re acting like the elder sister instead of the younger one.”

  “I have stepped into Mother’s shoes. A difficult fit, but I must try to wear them anyway. So listen to our mother’s words coming through me. The Shakers will treat you kindly. When you read Mother’s letter at first light, you will see it’s the best way right now. The only way. The Shakers don’t take part in war. According to Aunt Sophrena, they seek peace above all else. Simple peace.”

  Heather tucked the letter inside her bodice before reaching across the dozing Lucas to grasp Beth’s hand. “I so wish I could stay and help you.”

  “So do I, but Pa won’t accept a Yankee into his house. Not while the wound of Simon’s death is so fresh in his mind.”

  “I’m not a Yankee. I’m his daughter.”

  “And my sister. Nothing can ever change that.” Beth squeezed her hand before shaking Lucas to wake him. “Come, little brother. Give Heather another hug before we must go as quietly as shadows back to our beds.”

  They clung to each other for a long moment. Then Beth and Lucas slipped silently out the barn door. The two dogs followed after them, leaving Heather far too alone. She p
ulled the blanket tight around her to keep in every bit of warmth and tried to imagine what this aunt Sophrena might look like. Stiff. Stern. Still, the Shakers did dance to worship. That did not sound so stiff. It sounded amazingly odd. The very thought made Heather’s head spin, but she did have one clear thought. There was no way Heather could ever be a Shaker. Not if she had to give up Gideon or her baby.

  Would the Shakers ask her to do that? Heather reached up to feel the crackle of her mother’s letter under her dress and, in spite of her weariness, wished for the morning light.

  6

  Sophrena Prescott arose from bed at the first toll of the Shaker rising bell the way she had for the last twenty-five years. Habits clung to her like lint to a dark cloak. The other sisters in the room were also getting out of bed at the sound of the bell.

  Time to be up and the day to begin. Chores awaited. Beds to make. Floors to sweep. Biscuits to cook. She had kitchen duty. Not a bad duty for November when the warmth of the ovens was welcome instead of suffocating the way it was in the summer months.

  She knelt by her bed for the morning prayer. The other sisters in the room were doing the same. Sophrena could almost feel the silent prayers rising around her as they welcomed the day and gave thanks for the blessing of work and the love of God. Hands to work, hearts to God. The words slipped through her mind like a needle through worn cloth. But words alone did not make a proper prayer any more than a needle by itself could mend a rip in a garment. One had need of thread knotted to hold the stitches. Prayers had need of a connection to the heart.

  Forgive me, Lord. She pushed the words silently toward the heavenly Father. Truly the most sincere prayer words she’d offered in days. But for what did she beg forgiveness? She had no outward sins. She continued her Shaker walk without visible fault. The faults were in the weariness of her thinking. Her fault was in losing her joy. Her proper joy. The joy of a covenanted Believer.

  She’d signed the Covenant of Belief many years ago and become a Shaker in heart and mind. While she’d been resistant when she and her husband in the world had first come to the Shakers, once at Harmony Hill, she’d found the village had much to offer. Decidedly more than marriage to a man with no love for her in spite of the marriage vows they’d spoken.

  Strange how things worked out. Jerome, the one enthused by the idea of Shaker life, had not persevered. Instead he had left the Believers and gone back to the world. He had not asked her to go with him. He had not asked her anything, but merely freed himself from the worldly ties of marriage by getting a divorce on the grounds that she was a Shaker. A reason the courts in Kentucky accepted without argument. It mattered not that he was the reason she had become a Shaker in the first place.

  Sophrena had no argument with it either. In fact, she’d paid it little note. By then, she was part of a larger family. She was Sister Sophrena and content in the company of her Shaker sisters and brothers. She willingly worked at whatever task she was assigned and in time was entrusted with the guidance of the younger sisters. Oh, how she loved her little sisters as she gently prodded them along the Shaker path, but perhaps even more she had liked recording those journeys in the family’s journal. A visible record of the village activities.

  She pulled her dress on, draped her collar around her neck, and tied on her apron. She tried not to think about the feel of the pen in her hand as words spilled from her to dance across the page. No more. Some years before, the Ministry had decided she was not keeping her journal entries properly simple in reporting the doings of the family and had given that task over to others.

  ’Tis a gift to be simple, Sophrena reminded herself as she adjusted her cap. Some of the sisters were taking turns at the small mirror to situate their caps properly, but Sophrena had no need of a looking glass to position her cap. It settled on her head like the old friend it was. Like the pen had once fit in her hand.

  A sigh whispered through her. She kept her eyes away from Sister Betty, who now had the task of recording the happenings of their West family each day. She would not allow envy to creep into her mind. What difference did it make that Sister Betty’s reports were as dry as broom straw left out in the sunshine all the good days of fall? Dry was good for broom straw. And approved for journals.

  Sophrena had no problem imagining how Sister Betty’s entry would read for this day. November 21, 1864. The kitchen sisters baked 5 dozen biscuits, 25 loaves of bread, peeled and boiled a bushel of potatoes. The weather was fine. No one made a new pattern for the chair bottoms. The men shucked corn, fed the cattle, built a fence. Everything was the same, the very same as November 20 was and as November 22 will be.

  With a shake of her head to clear away her foolish thoughts, she descended the stairs two floors to the kitchen to make those five dozen biscuits. The other sisters assigned to kitchen duty glanced up from their work to welcome her with smiles and a quiet greeting. Each had her task, so there was no need for useless chatter.

  The same was good, she sternly told herself as she measured out the flour and baking soda. Unity was the pathway to peace. One had no need for upsetting thoughts when one knew each step that would be taken in a day’s time. A month’s time. A year’s time. There was no need for words on a page to speak of a yearning in the heart for something more. Such words would do naught but plummet her into sin. It was good she was no longer entrusted with record keeping. Surely it was a vanity to be so taken with one’s own words that one desired them visible in front of one’s eyes.

  She dumped the dough out of the wooden bowl onto the flour-dusted biscuit board and began rolling it out to the proper thickness. With no wasted motions, she cut the biscuits and lined them up on the baking pans. Dozens of biscuits. The brothers would be hungry. The sisters would be hungry. The children would be hungry. No children would be eating Sophrena’s biscuits here in this house. The children were in the children’s house, but some sister there would be in the kitchen rolling out biscuit dough and using a like biscuit cutter to make the biscuits. Every family dwelling in the village would have a sister doing the same.

  The same. Everything was the same. Why could she no longer take comfort from that sameness?

  She mashed down the remains of the dough and rolled it out again. Nothing was to be wasted. A Shaker was a good steward of her blessings. A good Shaker didn’t question why the dough must be rolled out an inch thick. A good Shaker understood that such things were learned by many like hands rolling out biscuits and that experience shared by the Ministry to all Shaker kitchens. One had no reason to wonder if a thin biscuit might taste better on this day.

  Sophrena folded the biscuit dough back together to make the proper thickness. A thin biscuit would bake up too hard and end up useless crumbles on the plates of her brothers and sisters. Was that what was wrong with her? Had she somehow rolled her spirit out too thin and now it was crumbling under too much contrary thinking?

  She tried to concentrate only on the task at hand. The mixing of the dough. The cutting of the biscuits. But the chore took no thought and her mind would not be silenced on this morning. A reason for her discontent must be found so she could whirl it away when next they had meeting.

  Another sigh escaped her lips. She was glad for the kitchen clatter that kept her sisters from noting it. But in truth, there had been many meetings, many chances to whirl away her wrong thinking, and her feet had moved through the dances by rote, feeling nothing at all. Even there in the meetinghouse, her spirit lay flat and useless within her.

  “Sister Sophrena, you don’t seem yourself this day.” Sister Edna stepped up beside Sophrena, the corners of her mouth turned down in fake concern.

  Sophrena composed her face. She had no desire to share her discontent with Sister Edna, who had no concern for anything except proving herself more faithful and more worthy than her sisters. What she lacked was more kindness. She seemed to rejoice when one of the sisters stumbled. No doubt she would celebrate if Sophrena was tripped up by the malaise spreading through her.
/>
  “It has been a long year,” Sophrena said. “With much sorrow. It wears on one knowing the world outside our village borders is in upheaval with armies of neighbors shooting and killing one another.”

  “You should not listen to the news if it is going to send you into a season of melancholy.” Sister Edna’s eyes, never very wide, narrowed even more as she looked at Sophrena. “Besides, the war has nothing to do with us. We do not pick up weapons of destruction.”

  “Yea,” Sophrena agreed. “But all are not Believers. Surely you remember the echo of cannons from a few years ago when the armies met at nearby Perryville intent on destroying one another. Each blast meant mayhem and death. Such is still going on even if our ears can no longer hear the noise.”

  “I well remember that time and a sorry time it was.” A frown flashed across Sister Edna’s face. “Those soldiers coming through here like locusts eating our food. We did nothing but cook day and night for too many days to name. I feared we would starve come winter.”

  “Our food stores are plentiful now. It has been a good harvest.” Sophrena regretted speaking of the war to Sister Edna. She was sorry of the necessity of speaking anything to Sister Edna, but such was not acceptable thinking. She managed more words. “We can feed any who come.”

  “As our Mother Ann instructs. Turn none in need away.”

  “It is good to have a generous heart.” Sophrena agreed in hopes Sister Edna would be satisfied and turn back to her own kitchen tasks. There was nothing generous about the sister’s heart. Or seemingly, her own this morn.

  Even now, she sensed Sister Edna was seeking the proper words to be sure Sophrena realized which of them had the better spirit. Sophrena didn’t care. They had long been sisters together here at Harmony Hill. They were to have love for one another. It was so ordered, but proper love could not always be forced into one’s heart. Some sisters were harder to see kindly than others. Sophrena started to turn away from Sister Edna to check on the biscuits. She had no need to hear more of her words. Or to reveal any more of her own malaise to this sister. It was Eldress Lilith who must hear Sophrena’s confessions of wrongs done, whether of thought or deed.