A Deadly Shaker Spring

by Deborah Woodworth

  “Gennie, dear, I must find out everything I can about these threats to our survival. Who else can—or will?”

  “Please talk to Grady first—please.”

  Rose winced as Gennie clutched her arms where the shards of broken whiskey-bottle glass had pricked her.

  “What is wrong? Have you been injured?” Gennie put her hands on her hips and frowned at Rose, who felt the sternness, despite her five-inch height advantage. “Rose, I insist you talk to Grady.”

  A bell tinkled in the outer room. “Oh, that’s a customer. Look, Grady is expecting me to call about now, so I know he’s in his office.” She picked up the telephone receiver and spoke to the operator. “Here, he’s coming on the line. Tell him what you’ve told me.” She handed the phone to Rose and slid between the curtains to the salesroom.

  “Tell me the address slowly,” Grady said, after Rose had repeated her story to him. “And, for heaven’s sake, Rose, don’t go there alone. Just stay home. I’ll take care of this.”

  “Will Sheriff Brock let you?”

  “Harry’s gone up to Ohio to fish with a buddy.”

  “This seems an odd time to leave, while we’re in the midst of these frightening incidents.”

  “Between you and me, I think that’s why he left. He’s used to the sheriff’s job being easy, like it usually is around here. He just doesn’t want to deal with y’all anymore.”

  Grady’s candor intrigued Rose. She wondered how long it would be before he tried to unseat Harry Brock as county sheriff. Not long, she hoped.

  “Anyway, you stay put, Rose, do you hear me? You’re not listening, I can tell. Look, I’ll get to that meeting myself, God willin’ and the crick don’t rise, and I’ll find out what’s going on.”

  FIFTEEN

  THE LITTLE-USED STAIRCASE TO THE TOP FLOOR OF the Trustees’ building creaked as if it objected to unexpected feet upon it. The sisters and brethren were all at the midday meal, or Rose hoped they were. But just in case one had stayed behind, she climbed the steps on the balls of her feet to keep her heels from clanking against the wood. She wasn’t doing something wrong, she told herself, only difficult to explain.

  She reached a large attic room warmly lit in the center by a skylight. With its usual economy, the Society hadn’t bothered to run electricity to this floor. It was so rarely used anymore.

  An entire wall was lined with built-in drawers and closets, each with a number plate just above the handle. Until the last decade, inhabitants of the Trustees’ Office had stored their off-season clothing in this attic. Now, since only a few sisters lived in the building, they simply used empty rooms for storage. The attic held only clothing of the world worn by Believers when they first arrived in North Homage.

  Rose went directly to a closet near the middle of the west wall. She swung the door open and began sorting through the dresses inside, sliding the hangers aside as she searched. She worked quickly. If anyone mounted the stairs now and caught her riffling through these particular clothes, there’d be questions for sure. Rumors, too, she supposed. Everyone would wonder why their eldress had taken a sudden interest in clothing from the world.

  Most of the dresses had been neither stylish nor new when they’d been worn by women who became sisters after living some years in the world. Several probably should have been turned into rags. In fact, all the dresses should have been given to charity, but Rose had thought they might be useful to the sewing-room sisters. But then she’d forgotten about them. There was no excuse for such an oversight, of course, but it certainly had turned out lucky in the end. She only hoped her mission would turn out as lucky.

  Her evening visit to Languor would be riskier than she’d hoped. Grady wouldn’t be there. Just as Rose had returned from visiting Caleb and Gennie, Grady had called her to tell her he and the only other officer in the small Sheriff’s Department had been called to deal with a suspected child kidnapping in a far-flung corner of Languor County. He’d begged Rose, ordered her, to stay home. She had listened politely and promised nothing. In fact, she preferred to go alone. She suspected that the appearance of a sheriff’s deputy at the meeting would surely put the apostates on their guard, and she would be less likely to learn their plans.

  “Ah, here’s one that might work,” Rose whispered. She extracted a brown gabardine shift with a straight cut. She remembered Sarah Baker arriving in this dress two years earlier. It looked like a 1920s style, so it might have belonged originally to Sarah’s mother. Well, never mind, Rose thought, it’s made for a tall woman, so it might do the trick. Sarah was plumper than Rose, but wearing a belt around the middle would hide the extra fabric and update the style, too. Most important, the dress was dark and plain. Perfect for what Rose had in mind.

  The small Episcopal church filled with whispering men and a few women. Rose slipped inside and settled in a corner of a back pew. She bowed her head to pray. This wasn’t her church, but she still felt it to be holy space, and she needed strength and guidance. She also needed to calm herself. Her nerves had been ready to spasm at the slightest sound since she’d left North Homage. Rather than lie, she had taken the Society’s Plymouth without comment while everyone ate a late evening meal after a long day of planting. If they missed her, they’d assume she was dining with Wilhelm in the Ministry dining room. Wilhelm would assume, from her note, that she was doing trustee’s work in town.

  She had pulled on the loose brown dress in her room, smashed her hair under a scarf covered by a bonnet, then wrapped herself in her long wool cloak. She chose a quiet moment to slip from her room and around to the west side of the Trustees’ Office, where the car was kept. After arriving in town, she had left the telltale Shaker bonnet and cloak in the car.

  Getting back would be a different matter. She would have to wait until very late and hope that no one had tried to find her after the evening meal. She counted on general physical exhaustion to send everyone to bed quickly and with closed windows, since the evening had turned windy. Rain would probably arrive before Rose had to trek the five blocks she had put, just to be sure, between the church and the Society’s distinctive black, almost-new car.

  The Episcopal population in Languor County was tiny compared to the Baptists. The county supported only one Episcopal church, and this was it. Rose wondered why such a meeting would be held here instead of in one of the many Baptist churches. Then she remembered. Most of the wealthier farmers and businessmen were Episcopalian. Richard Worthington was a deacon in this very church. He might be here tonight. Every nerve alert, she thought about the danger of being recognized and about how she had taken care to be alone. She glanced behind her at the open front door. She could still leave. It would be wise to leave. But there was no other way to discover what the Society was up against.

  People filled in the pews clear back to where she sat. Could all these people truly hate the Shakers and want to drive them from the county? The crowds closed around Rose without showing curiosity in her. She was glad she’d thought to wrap her curly red hair in the brown silk scarf. The dimness of the church helped, too.

  The whispering quieted as three people entered the chancel from the sacristy door. Rose recognized the man leading the small group as the church’s rector, the Reverend Geoffrey Sim, though he wore street clothes rather than his usual cassock and stole. She had spoken with him on several occasions about ideas for providing food and clothing for the Depression battered poor of Languor, and she had found him a kind and sympathetic man. She would not have expected him to be involved in a meeting like this. He crossed to the center of the chancel, bowed to the altar, and turned to face the audience.

  He was followed by a tall woman, then a man, both strangers to Rose. With a brisk step and ramrod-straight back, the woman crossed in front of the altar without glancing at it and sat in a chair facing the pews. She had long gray hair piled on top of her head and surrounded by tight pincurls. Her body was all sharp angles in a severe navy-blue suit. As her cold eyes skimmed over the heads
of the audience, her mouth tightened in a thin, down-curved line, as if she were about to discipline a group of unruly schoolchildren.

  The man who completed the trio took a chair to the priest’s right. His eyes flickered toward the woman and then scanned the crowd, face by face.

  Rose ducked her head behind a woman with a large hat. Though she didn’t recognize the man, he might know her. Someone could have pointed her out to him at some time, especially if she was considered a leader of the enemy.

  When the hat in front of her dipped to one side, Rose studied the man briefly. He was no taller than the woman, but while she seemed designed to use space efficiently, he took more than his share. He had the look of a muscular man gone to fat. A month in a Shaker village would do him no end of good, Rose thought. His arms showed evidence of some remaining strength, but most of his chest muscles had slid into a pool of fat at his belly. Still, there was nothing jolly or slothful about the man. His eyes narrowed in a way that tightened the knot in Rose’s stomach.

  The stream of arrivals finally thinned and the heavy double doors clanged shut. The chattering died away as the priest stepped forward and raised a hand in benediction.

  “Let us pray . . .”

  A sea of heads bobbed forward. Rose bowed her head, too, but she intended to say her own prayer for her own reasons.

  “Lord,” began the priest, “bless your followers in the endeavor they are about to undertake. Be with them as they struggle against any forces of evil in our midst. Help them to know Thy will and to do Thy will in all things. Amen.”

  Rose found little to object to in this prayer and added only that she hoped God’s will included the immediate survival of the North Homage Shakers. She felt sure that God recognized evil when He saw it and that somehow He would convince these people that the evil in their midst came not from the Believers, but from their own hearts. She relaxed slightly, ready to leave the problem in God’s hands.

  What followed shattered any hope Rose had that the situation would dissolve into peace and goodwill.

  The priest turned on his heel and disappeared through the sacristy door, as if to distance himself quickly from what was about to occur. The man in front heaved himself to his feet and planted himself in the space the priest had vacated. He took his time, surveying the crowd, giving quick nods to faces he recognized.

  “Evenin’, friends,” he said with a smug grin. “Y’all are a welcome sight, I don’t mind telling you.” The crowd murmured their greetings.

  “Ned, good to see you. How’s the wife and kids? The baby over that croup? Good, good.”

  He’s enjoying this, Rose thought. He’s feeding on it. Despite the folksy language, Rose heard an educated, cultured voice, with a bland northern accent putting on the trappings of a hill-country drawl. He may have grown up in Kentucky, but he’d clearly spent many years elsewhere. And there was something familiar about his choice of words.

  Rose glanced behind him to the woman. She sat as if she had a fence post for a spine, but her grim expression had been replaced by a moue of distaste. Whether for the situation or for the man in front of her, Rose couldn’t tell.

  “Y’all know why you’ve been invited here, I reckon.”

  Nods and murmurs of assent rippled through the crowd.

  “The wife and me”—he jerked his head toward the woman behind him—“we grew up here in Languor County, same as most of you. The name’s Kentuck, Kentuck Hill. Named after this great state, I was. The wife’s name’s Laura.”

  The names aroused Rose’s suspicions. Kentuck Hill was too convenient a combination, and Laura sounded like the wishful thinking of a plain but secretly romantic woman. Rose guessed these two were “Mr. and Mrs. Languor County,” editors of the anti-Shaker Languor County Watcher, who also exhibited a penchant for geographical identities. It also explained the familiar ring of Mr. Hill’s speech. Could this be Klaus Holker as well? Rose noticed that, in common with the anonymous editorialist, Mr. Hill referred to everyone as “my friends.” Everyone, presumably, except the Shakers.

  “Laura and me,” Mr. Hill continued, “we know what it’s like trying to scrabble out a living from the dirt when the weather’s too hot and dry and everybody’s too poor to buy what you’re selling anyways.”

  His friendly grin transformed to a scowl. “You got kids to feed, and it hurts to watch ’em go to bed hungry, don’t it?”

  The responses were louder this time. A man two rows in front of Rose jumped to his feet.

  “Damn right it’s hard,” he shouted, poking his hat in the air. “I got my ma living with us, too, and I can’t feed her neither.”

  Kentuck Hill nodded slowly. “Yes, my friends, we can see what you’ve endured. We know what you’ve been suffering.” Like a puppeteer of emotions, he raised the crowd’s anger, then soothed it by softening the tone of his voice.

  “And do you know why you’ve had all this suffering here in Languor County when the rest of the country doesn’t have it as bad?” He spoke now barely above a whisper, but his voice penetrated every corner of the room.

  “Because you, my friends, have Shakers for neighbors. The wife and me, we’ve traveled a lot in the last few years, and we observed something real interesting. There’s other Shakers, you know, besides these you got here. And you know what? Every place there’s Shakers, we saw poverty much worse than in the places that kept ’em out. Now, why do you suppose that is?” He beamed at the crowd as if they were all bright children who would puzzle out the right answer soon. Rose cringed as his lies went unchallenged.

  “It’s them Shakers, that’s why!” shouted a man in front, right on cue. “They’re undercutting me right and left. I’m about to lose my business ’cause of them.”

  When the man stood, Rose recognized the bald head and small frame of Floyd Foster, the town’s greengrocer. He overcharged outrageously, often refused credit to the town’s poorer folks, and was in no danger of bankruptcy as far as Rose could tell. She seethed. How could she keep quiet and listen to these vile, vicious lies about her people? But why was this “Mr. Hill” making up such falsehoods? What good would it do him and “the wife”? Rose had to listen to find out, no matter how much the lies enraged her. She clutched the edge of her pew to keep herself from leaping up and denouncing the crowd.

  Her patience was to be tried even further. At a glance from her husband, Laura Hill left her chair to stand primly beside him, her fingers interlaced at waist level.

  “My wife, Laura, has a few things to tell you. These are facts you may not know and . . . well, friends, I don’t mean to alarm y’all, but your families’ lives could be at stake here. We just wouldn’t feel right if we kept this to ourselves.” With a saintly nod, he stepped back a pace to give Laura the floor.

  The woman trembled visibly and darted nervous glances into the crowd, then down at her feet.

  “I want . . . I want you to understand about the children,” Laura stammered. “The children are so important. Many of you are parents, and you love your own children deeply. I myself was never blessed with the children I so longed for, but I know in my heart what it is to love a child. You would do anything for your children. You would rather die than let anything happen to them. And, oh, how it hurts when you cannot even give them food enough to fill their little stomachs.”

  Laura’s high-pitched voice sounded childlike, yet there was an intensity about the woman that Rose recognized from her years as a Believer. Some Shakers were practical about their faith, preferring to demonstrate it mostly through their deeds and thoughts. Rose considered herself one such.

  For some, though, their faith burned through their hearts and demanded fervent expression. Such were the early Believers, who endured beatings and the dangers of an uncivilized territory to spread their faith. Laura’s eyes held that light. But she was talking about saving children rather than souls.

  “These Shakers,” Laura continued, “do we really know what they do with the children we so trustingly let them rai
se? Some of you have sent your own children to their school, and now you know what can happen to them. Filthy, vicious rats! Attacking your own innocent little children!”

  Laura’s voice broke as her breath caught in a sob. The tears were genuine. This woman lived for children, yet had none of her own. What must that do to a woman? Rose thought. Kentuck jumped up and put his arm around his wife’s shoulders. With an air of tenderness, he whispered a few words in her ear. She sniffed and nodded. He led her to her seat on the stage and turned back to the crowd held spellbound by the drama.

  “I know you folks will understand. My wife is a sweet soul, and she just gets all upset at the thought of those Shakers and what they might be doing to Languor’s children, not to mention the innocents who must live under the Shakers’ control. I know y’all feel just the same.”

  Heads nodded and voices murmured in assent.

  “Then it’s time we did something about it, isn’t it? It’s not just for our businesses, that put food on the table for our children, but for our children’s very lives!”

  A man across the aisle from Rose jumped out of his pew. “Darn right, it’s time to do something!” he shouted. Rose slid down in her seat as she recognized the thin farmer who had challenged her during her meeting with parents after the rat incident.

  “It was one of my kids in that schoolhouse with them rats. He coulda been bit to death—one little girl was bit, you know—and them Shakers just let it happen. I’m a poor man, but I protect my own. I’d shoot any rat that come near my kids. I’d never let ’em breed like that right on my land where they could hurt my family. That Shaker place is nothing but a filthy hellhole, and we oughta clean it up, get rid of those people forever.”

  “Yeah, he’s right,” said the man right next to Rose. Others jumped up, exclaiming and shaking fists in the air. People began to spill into the aisles. Rose stood, too, and began to edge out of the pew, keeping her head down to avoid being recognized. Moving slowly, she eased backward through the growing crowd and reached the narthex, inside the entrance to the church. Just before leaving the building, she turned and glanced back at the people shouting and pushing toward the man standing in front of the altar. Kentuck’s arms extended outward in a calming gesture, as if he had more to say. Rose longed to listen, but she knew this was her chance to leave. She began to turn again toward the front door. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw someone standing still, facing her. Without thinking, she looked at him. Richard Worthington watched her, his thin lips curved into a mirthless grin.