by M. Mabie
She studied her hands, fidgeting in front of her, and I noticed her wedding band was on her right hand. It had been on the left at the visitation.
“You know you can make your own decisions, right? You can do whatever you want. You don’t have to listen to anybody. Okay?”
When she didn’t look up or acknowledge me, my nerves hit their limit. “Would you please look at me?”
Finally, she did, and for the first time since I’d met her the day before, she had emotion in her eyes. It hit me hard, and I gentled my tone. “Just think about what you want.” She appeared on the verge of bursting into tears at any moment, and I wasn’t sure why, but I added, “Pray on it, Myra.”
Those words seemed to fade some of the worry in her brow, and she nodded but didn’t respond. Her head lifted more, and her posture straightened, and she let me really look at her.
Her flushed cheeks.
The glassy luster in her eyes.
The deep cupid’s bow above her lip.
Her ivory skin.
She was beautiful, just as she was, and deserved more than that stupid town could offer her. But I wasn’t going to be another man telling her what to do, so I let it go at that.
“Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in Him; and He shall bring it to pass,” she recited. “And I’m sorry for your loss.”
My loss? What about her loss?
She didn’t have a clue and was just as brainwashed as everyone else. Talking in Bible verses. It was like talking to a wall, and I was done.
“Take care of yourself.” I headed down the hall again, toward my truck and out of that place.
A few feet away, just before I passed my father’s office, she said to my back, “I’ll pray for you.”
He was just one step inside his doorway, overhearing what she’d said. I met his eyes and replied to the woman behind me, and to him as well. “Don’t waste your breath.”
I didn’t need their prayers. I didn’t need them.
12
Myra
Dear Lord,
Be with him Abraham. Show him the way.
Amen
13
Abe
I drove in silence until I was nearly deaf from it, so I turned the radio on and let it play on scan mode for rest of the drive home. It was something to scramble my thoughts. To get my mind out of Lancaster. To get my mind off her.
I had a full week of work at the lumberyard to look forward to. By the next weekend, I’d have a new dining set finished and delivered to a shop in town for consignment. Hopefully, I’d hear good news from the bank and celebrate with the Griers, and maybe Chris and Ashley too.
I’d be doing whatever I wanted.
Myra, on the other hand, would idly wait for further instruction until the elders and clergy decided her fate.
Usually, I didn’t drink much, but when I returned home Saturday night and got unpacked and squared away, I sat on my porch with a glass of bourbon from the bottle I’d received as a Christmas present from my bosses a few years back.
That night, I went to bed with the mindset of: if she was fine with letting others control her life, why shouldn’t I be?
Sunday night was different. Sunday night, I was full-blown angry. Angry at perfect strangers about something that had nothing to do with me. I didn’t drink that night, but I smoked a pipe as I read the Bible, looking for the verse she’d quoted me in the hall before I’d left.
I’d read my Bible many times, cover-to-cover and often. After a new experience, good or bad, I’d reread it with new eyes. It gave me peace knowing my perspective was changed, finding its way. And after being in Lancaster again, it was a good time to re-open it.
That’s what my father didn’t understand. I wasn’t angry at God; I was mad at him. Disgusted with the way he taught self-righteousness. Repulsed by his mis-interpretations. The ways he bent the words to fit his agenda. He used faith to manipulate people, to scare them into following rules and traditions that made no sense other than to inflate his holier-than-thou ego and line his bank account.
I heard the verse in her timid voice repeatedly.
Psalms. It had to be Psalms.
After skimming, stopping to read when I wanted, I waded through chapter after chapter until I found it. Funny enough, it was right under one of my favorites. I’d always liked 37:4.
Finding the scripture made me feel somewhat better that night, and I was finally able to put the book away.
I had a lunchmeat-sandwich-Sunday dinner, and then bitter coffee for breakfast.
By seven o’clock Monday morning, I’d expected for it to all be put behind me. I’d already wasted too much time thinking about Lancaster. It was like I hadn’t really left there yet, but that place had a lasting effect.
Chris had always been good at knowing when I didn’t feel like talking, although it never stopped him from going on and on.
“So I spent the better part of my Saturday night picking the oat or wheat or whatever-the-hell-they-are pieces out of a full box of Lucky Charms, all because Ashley had a craving for a bowl of just the marshmallows,” he shouted as he fed a pine plank into the face of the gang rip saw we were using. I caught it on the other side and stacked it with the others.
I pushed my protective glasses up the ridge of my nose and nodded.
He smacked my arm with his gloved hand, and dust flew everywhere. Then Chris reached for another plank. “I can’t even complain about all these cravings though. This pregnancy has her hornier than a barn cat.” He tossed another board into the saw. “Then again, look at me. It’s not her fault she can’t get enough.”
He stood proud, hands on his hips like Superman.
I started a new pile and straightened the finished stack I’d just made.
“Abe, come on. That was funny. I’ve been waiting to tell somebody that joke since yesterday when I thought of it. Ashely didn’t think it was that great, but I thought for sure you’d get a laugh.”
When I was ready to catch another plank, I admitted, “It’s a good one.”
His jaw swung open. “That’s it?”
I shrugged and waved for him to keep going as I caught a line of sweat running down my face with my forearm.
When the last piled was done, and it was time for lunch, we both grabbed our coolers and headed to the shade where our trucks were parked. He unlatched his tailgate and sat there, digging out his ham sandwiches and Pepsi.
I unwrapped my bologna and cheese, and sat on my small cooler, stretching my legs out in front of me.
“You upset about your brother?” Chris asked before the other guys joined up like they usually did.
I chewed and swallowed. “No, not really.” Even though that had to be some of it.
“Anything happen while you were there?” Chris, Ashley, and, of course, the Griers all knew how and where I grew up. He’d started working at the mill the summer before he graduated high school, the same year I moved to Fairview. I still worked there because up until recently, I’d owed the Griers a debt. He still worked there because he married the Griers’ only daughter, and the mill would be his someday.
“Nothing’s changed,” I replied.
“Did you expect it to?”
I chugged half of my water bottle. “No. Not really.”
“Ashley said the one time she went down there it freaked her out. If I can help it, I’m never going. I know she’s got family there and all, but no thank you. Our baby isn’t going anywhere near that place.” He wadded the baggie from his first sandwich and tossed it into his open cooler. “I saw something online about how they have that new school for troubled juveniles or something. The state even funded some of it. All I can think is: you think they need help when you send them there, just wait to see how messed up they are after.” He crunched a handful of corn chips, and spoke with his mouth full, adding, “How has a cult ever helped anyone?”
“They don’t.”
The word cult still stung. You want to believe that it’s ev
eryone’s right to believe what they want. To live how they feel is in accordance to their religion. That freedom of religion should protect everyone. It isn’t until you take the blinders off that you see Lancaster for what it really was.
A money machine. A compound created to appear as utopian as possible. A place where women and children are repressed, left uneducated and dependent on the very institution that made them that way. A breeding ground for abuse. And their leader was my father.
“It’s hard to not do anything,” I admitted, mid-thought.
“What do you mean?”
It felt like I was that angry eighteen-year-old, finally talking to a counselor, again. The only difference was, now I knew how sometimes talking about stuff actually helped. That didn’t change the fact that I hated doing it, but maybe just getting it out with Chris, someone who had no experience with Lancaster, would be good.
Maybe then I could just move on with my life and ignore what was going on.
“My brother was married.” I took another bite. “Well, kind of. Maybe?”
He curled his lip. I’d stumped him, and rightfully so. It wasn’t like it was out here. “I guess they’d only been married for a short time before he passed.”
“Okay?” he led, not understanding.
I ran my hand over my beard to get any crumbs that might be there. “Well, at the visitation, he had his Holy Mat ring on his left hand, and so did Myra, his widow. But then I talked to this guy I used to run around with, and he said they hadn’t had a reception yet.”
Some of the other guys had begun to head our way, and I didn’t want to get into it with people who wouldn’t get it. I shook my head and decided to drop it.
“Nope,” he said and closed the lid on his Coleman. “Let’s go back to work. You keep talking.” Since we were finished, we cleaned up. I waved a hand as we passed the other crew, and Chris gave a few of the younger guys who’d been working in a different part of the mill a hard time.
“Dori tried to explain the ring stuff to us before our wedding one night. It only confused me.” He pulled his safety glasses back down, and added, “So what does no reception mean?”
Mostly thinking out loud, I went on, “At first, I just thought if he’d been ill, it made sense that they’d waited to celebrate.”
We pulled on our gloves and started hauling in the next load to run through the gang ripper.
“See this is where you lose me. Why not have their reception the same day as the wedding?”
I took a deep breath, aware of how strange the marriage rituals were, and then just laid it out there. “To the church, you’re not really married until consummation. Until then, you have to wear your wedding bands on your right hand. I’d expect they typically do it that night, considering they’re not allowed to even touch before their wedding day. A lot of them even get married on weekdays. Then there’s a small reception meal scheduled for either that following Sunday after church or the weekend after to celebrate the changing of the bands and the Holy union.”
He gaped. “So everyone would just know if you hadn’t had sex with your wife yet?”
“That’s just another way for the church to have eyes on you all the time.”
“So if they hadn’t had a reception, then you don’t think they...” he stopped, confident I knew where he was going.
“I don’t know. When I saw her after the funeral, she had her ring back on the right hand.” I kicked my side of the pile into place at the bottom.
“So what does it matter?”
“It matters because, depending on certain things, it could change what happens to her.”
He came to a complete stop and cocked his head. “Like what?” he demanded. The normally lighthearted guy I’d known my whole free adult life was stone-faced and sober.
“I’m not sure.” Of course, I’d thought of a hundred different outcomes for her. “I overheard her brothers discussing her living with one of them as an extra set of hands, while the other didn’t want another mouth to feed. They could pair her off with an old widowed Legacy member.”
“Legacy?”
“The elders. They make all the decisions,” I conceded.
“What about what she wants?”
“They don’t care. I highly doubt they even ask her.”
He leaned against the pile. “Ashley would lose her fucking mind. No way anyone would tell her what she was going to do. Left-hand wife. Right-hand wife. Wouldn’t matter. She’d make up her own mind.”
“It’s not like that there. And Myra isn’t like Ashely. She has no clue that she has any rights or what her options are. She’s so brainwashed that she’ll probably just do whatever they say and never make a peep.”
“That sucks. When will she know?”
“They’re having a meeting about her Saturday with her brothers and the Legacies.”
“What about her father?”
“I’m not sure about him. He wasn’t at the funeral that I could tell.”
“You’d think he’d have something to say about it.” He stood and lifted his end of the stack, waiting on me. “Are you going on Saturday?”
“What? No.” I’d rather go to jail than back to Lancaster. “It’s not my business.”
His brows rose, and he lifted his clear glasses to look directly at me. “Then why are you so worried about it?”
Because she was beautiful and lost and deserved her freedom. Because she would waste away in that town. Because I knew what it was like to be forced into something I didn’t want. Because I remembered how isolated it was. Because I’d been through it all on my own even when I wasn’t sure if I’d make it or not. Because it was possible to leave—and survive—and I wondered if she realized that.
“I don’t know. It’s just that place gets under my skin.” He was quiet for a while, and I was sure he was thinking it over too. “Anyway, that’s it. It doesn’t have anything to do with me.”
It didn’t have anything to do with me that afternoon as I droned on, only half paying attention to what I was doing at work. It didn’t have anything to do with me at the store when I couldn’t even remember what I’d driven there for and went home without what I needed. It didn’t have anything to do with me as I applied an extra, unnecessary coat of stain on a headboard I’d already finished. And when I laid in bed that night, I still didn’t want it to have anything to do with me.
And if only her face would have dimmed and faded away, and the sound of her quoting me scripture would stop ringing in my ears, and I could get Psalms 27:4 out of my head, then it wouldn’t have anything to do with me.
Except it did, and I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do.
MY BANKER CALLED ON Tuesday and left me a voicemail, briefly explaining how they were sorry they couldn’t help me—at this time—and suggested I consider finding an investor.
That night I researched on my laptop about what certain religions did with widows. It had been quite a while since I’d spent a measurable amount of time chasing links and following stories online to better understand something.
There was so much information. That night’s search engine topics led me all over the place. From editorials of successful young wives losing their husbands at young ages, to military widows, and then to groups and resources for widows. I scoured different cultures and lifestyles until I ran into documents about levirate wives and widow inheritance.
There were so many different answers to the issue. Depending on your finances, faith, and family there were options all over the place. Some women never remarried. Some did. Some moved in with family until they got on their feet, and some were day-by-day trying to figure it out, according to one blogger I found.
Myra deserved to know about these choices.
After another quick search, I was on Lancaster’s ag website, which I’d seen posted on multiple billboards in town. There, I easily found a cell phone number for Robbie Carter. His dad had been the area’s biggest cattle farmer when I was younger, and I was r
ight assuming Robbie would be in on it too.
“Hello,” he answered, in the background, an infant wailed. It was late in the evening, but that didn’t stop me from calling.
“Robbie, it’s Abe.”
“Hold on a second. I can’t hear ya.” There were a few seconds of muffled speaking, and then a door shut. “Hello, this is Robbie.”
“Robbie, it’s Abe,” I repeated, and he cut me off.
“Abe, good to hear from you, bud. Sorry about all that screaming. What can I do for you?” He might have been a good guy, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t tangled up in the church as much as anyone else in that community. Still, it sounded like there was stuff going on in his house and I didn’t want to keep him or talk long enough to make me dislike him.
“My father said the Legacies were going to meet Saturday to discuss Myra. You don’t happen to know if they’ve set a time yet, do you?”
“You know, I haven’t heard.”
I paced the porch, hoping my cell reception would hold. “Isn’t your dad a Legacy?”
He sighed. “I guess I could call and ask him.” The edge in his voice told me he didn’t want to.
Regardless, I had to be honest with him, even if he turned me down. “That’s fine, but I don’t want him to know I’m asking.”
“Abe,” he warned. “It’s between the Foxes and the Legacies.” So her maiden name was Fox.
I didn’t enjoy putting him in a bad position, but for whatever reason, it was important to me. “I need to know.”
After a second or two and another muffled few words with someone else, he replied, “I’ll have Jenny call mom and ask her.”
“Thank you. Call me back.” I looked out over the yard, feeling relieved in a small way.
He was sharp with me but still polite. “It probably won’t be tonight. We’ve got a lot going on. I’ll call if I hear anything. Bye.”
He waited until I said goodbye and hung up.
For the first time in days, I wasn’t swimming upstream. I didn’t have a plan yet, but if I could talk to her before Saturday, maybe I could just explain to her that she had options. That she had a choice. They couldn’t make her do anything.
