The Blessed

by Ann H. Gabhart

  The motes of darkness were about to press down on Lacey and smother her before the preacher finally spoke the words she knew he’d stopped there to say. “Not forever, Lacey Bishop. Come summer you’ll have to act the proper wife. That will be nigh on a year since Mona passed on. More than enough time for both of us.”

  “You promised,” Lacey whispered again.

  He made a sound of disgust and didn’t bother trying to quiet his steps as he stomped down the stairs. He didn’t go to his bed but went out the front door. It was near dawn before she heard him come back in the house.

  That morning he looked at the fried eggs on the plate she set in front of him at breakfast. He poked them with a fork and said, “You got them too done.” Then he picked up the plate and threw it against the wall. The plate shattered all over the floor and the soft yolk of the egg ran down the wall.

  Rachel stared at him with eyes as big as saucers and let out a yowl like as how a piece of the plate had hit her.

  When Lacey started toward her to comfort her, Preacher Palmer grabbed Lacey’s arm. “Fix my eggs right first.”

  She wanted to shake loose of him, but his grip was hard on her and his eyes even harder. When she still hesitated, he said, “You’re my wife. Do as I say.”

  She went to the stove and broke more eggs in the skillet. She thought about catching him looking another way and spitting in them, but it did little good to answer meanness with meanness. She shut her ears to Rachel’s wails and cooked the eggs and put them on a new plate. There wasn’t an iota of difference in the eggs on the second plate and the first, but when she set it in front of him, he pushed his fork into them and ate.

  Lacey sat down beside Rachel and let the little girl climb up in her lap.

  “She’s too big for you to baby like that,” Preacher Palmer said.

  Lacey pretended he hadn’t spoken as she rubbed the child’s back and whispered, “Shh. Stop your crying.”

  The preacher stabbed a biscuit and smeared butter on it. He pointed his fork toward the egg splattered on the wall and the shards of glass on the floor. “Best clean that up.”

  Lacey kissed the top of Rachel’s head. Then she set her on her feet. “Get me the broom, Rachel.”

  She was still wiping the yellow yolk off the wall when Preacher Palmer pushed his chair back from the table. She could feel his eyes on her, but she didn’t turn to look at him. She just kept rubbing the wall even after no spot of egg was left on it.

  “All this is your fault, Lacey. Every bit your fault.”

  Her spirit fired up at that. She turned to stare straight at him. “A man of God shouldn’t fool himself with lies.”

  She thought for a minute he might sling another plate straight at her head, but then he lowered his eyes and his shoulders drooped. “Our Father in heaven, what is to become of us?” he said softly before he turned and went toward the door.

  So it was no wonder that, with the clouds gathered around them so thick, no sign of spring had made its way through. That was why she hadn’t been out looking for the first spot of yellow spring the way she usually did. A heart had to be ready for spring, and hers was stuck in winter.

  But as she stared down at the crushed dandelion bloom, she felt Rachel’s little hand reaching into hers. It wasn’t right to keep the spring from her. Wasn’t Rachel the reason she’d agreed to this farce of a marriage? Spring came in spite of clouds. Dandelions bloomed and little girls needed to dance in the spring.

  That afternoon after Preacher Palmer went out with Deacon Crutcher to visit the sick, Lacey told Rachel to go looking for a dandelion in the backyard. A smile was spread all the way across the little girl’s face when a few minutes later she came running back to the porch with a round yellow dandelion bloom clutched in her hand.

  “Do we get to do the dance?” Rachel asked her.

  Lacey’s heart hurt as she stared down at the child’s hopeful face and thought about how rare Rachel’s smiles had been in the last few weeks. As rare as her own. She’d agreed to wed the preacher to keep mothering Rachel, and now here she was shirking her duty, pulling sadness over on her when there wasn’t a bit of need in that. Even if come summer she’d have to attend to the preacher’s demands. Married women did as much everywhere. Cleaved to their husbands.

  Lacey grinned at Rachel and sat down on the porch steps to start unlacing her shoes. Rachel giggled and kicked off hers too. They danced all across the backyard right out into the edge of the woods to a little wet-weather spring the rain had made. The water was cold, just the way it was supposed to be, as they stomped and laughed. Lacey didn’t even look over her shoulder to be sure no church people had come to the preacher’s house to check that his wife was attending to her proper place.

  With their skirt tails soaked and mud between their toes, they went back out of the woods, but instead of going straight to the house, Lacey led Rachel over to the church house and into the graveyard. She’d been putting off visiting Miss Mona’s grave though she’d promised Rachel they’d plant flowers there. It had been too hard to think about Miss Mona in that cold winter ground. Too hard to think about her being gone forever.

  They both got quiet as they solemnly walked toward the new grave. Lacey’s heart started pounding almost as hard as it had the night the preacher had climbed up to the attic room. Maybe they shouldn’t have done the spring dance with Miss Mona so newly gone. The gloom was coming back to sit heavy on her shoulders, when all of a sudden, Rachel jerked on Lacey’s hand and started jumping up and down.

  “Look, Lacey. Look. Mama’s doing the spring dance with us.”

  Lacey could scarcely believe her eyes. Bright yellow dandelions were blooming all across Miss Mona’s grave like as how somebody had sowed them there. A blanket of yellow spring.

  It was a sign. Miss Mona was telling her or maybe it was the good Lord who was telling her that spring comes. Even when a person tries to close it out. It comes.

  Rachel ran ahead to the edge of the grave and reached down to the dandelion blooms. Lacey started to yell at her not to pick any, but she held back the words as the little girl ran her hands across the blooms like she might be stroking a soft pillow. Lacey sat down right beside her and told the stories about the spring dances her mother told her and about the spring dances with her mother and Junie and the ones with Miss Mona. And finally the story of this spring dance when spring was late to come to Lacey.

  “You think Mama’s hearing your stories?” Rachel asked as she leaned against Lacey.

  “Oh yes. I’m sure of it. That’s why all these sunspots sprouted here on her grave. So we’d know it. So we’d know that spring comes, and with the spring somehow things will be all right. Now we’ve got to go make that cake.”

  They had the cake in the oven and the mud washed off their feet and their skirt tails drying by the stove before the preacher came home.

  The next day the Shaker men came peddling their bean seeds.

  7

  As Isaac made his way to the outskirts of the city where Brother Asa had promised his horses a rest before starting for the Shaker village, he didn’t spot any of the watch. But they could be after him. They might even put a price on his head that would have everybody hunting him. He imagined his description on flyers spread across town like the ones he’d seen for runaway slaves. Fugitive white male, 25, brown hair, shifty brown eyes. Dangerous. Reward offered for his capture.

  There hadn’t been time to print anything like that. Isaac knew that. All the same, he cringed every time he stepped from the shadows into the open. So he slipped down back streets and cut across backyard fences. Here and there a dog chased after him, barking loud enough to raise the neighborhood. Each time Isaac’s heart bounded up into his throat as he could almost feel hands reaching to grab his collar and drag him in front of the judge.

  When at last he left the city streets behind, he wasn’t sure he’d find the Shaker man still waiting, but Brother Asa was right where he said he’d be, leaning against his w
agon while his horses picked at the spring grass.

  “I was beginning to doubt you’d come,” Brother Asa said when he spotted Isaac.

  “Yet you waited.” Isaac looked up at the sun. It was well past mid-afternoon.

  “Yea, so I did. And have you come with your mind made up to seek peace at Harmony Hill?” Asa climbed up to the wagon seat and looked down at Isaac.

  “I don’t know about peace.” Isaac thought that might be too much to ask. “But food and shelter I’ll admit to chasing after.”

  “Then food and shelter you will find. The Ministry will be glad enough to give you a bed in our Gathering Family. We have much need of strong, young men in our midst with the spring planting season upon us.” Brother Asa picked up the reins, and the two horses reached for a last mouthful of grass before they raised their heads. “Spring is more often a season of parting rather than joining for those uncertain of the Shaker way.”

  “I once worked on a farm. I know about planting.”

  Isaac’s legs felt heavy as he climbed up to sit beside Brother Asa. He told himself it was because he’d been running. It had nothing to do with reluctance to leave Ella’s town behind. He looked over his shoulder as Brother Asa guided the horses up onto the road and headed them east. There was nothing for him back there. He didn’t need to stand beside Ella’s grave to keep his love for her alive in his heart. Yet when he turned back to look ahead again and tried to pull up her face, her image kept drifting away from his mind’s eye as if this time she was refusing to allow him to carry her away from her beloved Louisville.

  He shut his eyes and forced her image out of the shadows of his mind. Her face the day they first met. The day the preacher pronounced them man and wife. The day they left for the West. Her face in death. The memories marched through his mind, some stabbing his heart. But he remembered. There was no reason to stay near her body in the grave. And every reason to get far away from her father. Especially now with the watch searching him out as a thief and a man capable of murder.

  They hanged murderers. Not the end Isaac was after. While he had been considering the advantages of dying, he didn’t want to partake of those advantages as an innocent man on the gallows. Better to join the living dead. That should be punishment enough.

  No chasing after adventure in the West. No loved one to lie down beside at night. No children to swing high in the air above his head. Nothing but work and discipline and preaching. Punishment enough.

  Once out on the road, Brother Asa flicked the reins to encourage the horses forward. He didn’t look over at Isaac or speak again as the horses settled into an easy pace.

  Silence hung over them. Not a good silence. At least to Isaac’s ears. He imagined unspoken questions bouncing between them with every jolt of the wagon, but when he peeked over at Brother Asa, he could see no lines of worry on his face. Nor did he slide his eyes over toward Isaac even when a horse and rider galloped up behind them.

  Isaac didn’t share the Shaker’s calm. His heart began pounding again as he imagined one of the watch riding after him. He scarcely dared breathe until the rider overtook them and passed by with nothing more than the slight nod of acknowledgment one traveler gives another.

  Isaac eased his grip on the wagon seat and tried to force his breath in and out slow and steady. He’d been poised to leap off the wagon and run for the woods across the field. Until that moment, he hadn’t realized how used to staying out of sight in the shadows of the city he’d become. Now here on the wagon seat, he felt exposed to every eye, even when the road was empty and the only eyes were those of the cattle in the pastures.

  Brother Asa reached behind the seat and pulled a felt hat nearly identical to his own out of a wooden box. “Here. Your head might need protection from the sun. I took these for sale, but few took note of my wares this trip.”

  “The sun is sinking,” Isaac said as he put the hat on and pulled it down low on his forehead. Not as good as a shadow in the alley, but at least part of his face was hidden.

  “Yea, the day is fading, but the moon is nigh full this night. A good time to travel the roads and get us closer to our destination.” Brother Asa looked over at Isaac. “Of course, at times there are more scalawags abroad in the night, but we will trust Mother Ann to watch over us and give us safe journey.”

  Again the silence fell over them. Isaac kept his eyes on the horses’ rumps and listened to the sound of their hooves against the hard bed of the road. It should have been a peaceful sound combined with that of the birds singing their spring songs in the trees alongside the road. But it wasn’t.

  Finally Isaac said, “I didn’t stab that man last night.”

  “I know that, my brother,” the little Shaker said.

  “How?” Isaac turned to study the man’s profile. His face was calm and unworried as it had been ever since they met. “You never laid eyes on me before this morning. And I’ve already told you I am responsible for a death.”

  Brother Asa glanced over at Isaac. “So you say, but your eyes say different. The eyes are the window into one’s soul. You may have seen death. Of that I have no doubt. But you have never carried desire in your heart to cause such. Even your own.”

  “That was no more than cowardice. Plain and simple.” Isaac looked down at his hands on his knees. The handkerchief was still wrapped around his hand. He slowly uncurled it and stared at the cut. It was beginning to fester.

  “If that is so, it was a gift to you.”

  “The gift of cowardice.” Isaac’s voice showed his scorn for that. “Not much of a gift.”

  “Gifts come in many guises. While it may seem that cowardice would not be what one would desire, at the same time it has given you the gift of another chance to be the man the Eternal Father would have you be. Have you never considered that? What path our Lord may have set before you?”

  “I was going west. That was the path I wanted.”

  “Why?”

  “There’s opportunity there. Land for a man ready to work for it. Fortune perhaps.” His words echoing in his head mocked him. The same words he’d said to Ella and her father.

  “Fortune.” Brother Asa shook his head. “Fool’s gold most often. Fortune brings no man happiness. Happiness must reside within one’s soul. Then we can reach for fortune in the gifts of the spirit.”

  “Is fortune one of those?” Isaac asked. “A gift of the spirit?”

  “Nay, not fortune as you speak of it. True fortune lies in the likes of these. Love for your brothers and sisters. The desire to give your heart to God and your hands to work. Tasks that satisfy the need to be useful to our society. Worship that fills your being with light. Songs of joy. Peace.”

  Isaac was quiet a moment as he considered the man’s words. Such gifts seemed out of his reach. “Do you have those gifts?” he finally asked.

  “I have been blessed with such gifts often in my time with the Believers.”

  “You’ve never felt a fighting of the spirit? Nothing that would make you think you might find more in another place?”

  “Nay. The Believer’s life has always filled me all the way up to the top.” Brother Asa laughed a little. “But could be that’s because there isn’t much of me to fill to get to my top. Even before I danced my legs off to the knees.” His laugh got heartier.

  Isaac was surprised to feel an answering laugh swelling up inside him. He hadn’t truly felt the urge to laugh since Ella came down with the fever. He never thought to laugh again. He never thought to deserve to laugh again. Not with Ella in the ground because of him. The good feeling shriveled within him as he reached for the gloom and pulled it back around him the way he might slip on a well-worn and familiar coat.

  If Brother Asa noticed, he made no comment as they settled into the silence and rode away from the sunset into the long shadows of evening.

  They stopped to rest the horses in the deep of the night as the moon began to sink toward the western horizon. The little Shaker offered Isaac his bedroll, but Isaa
c waved aside his generosity and curled up on the wagon seat instead. He was used to sleeping in corners away from the light. There in the fading moonlight with stars decorating the sky seemed the best bed he’d had for weeks.

  At daylight they were back on the road. Isaac expected Brother Asa to preach the Shaker way at him as they rode along, but the man seemed content with the silence. Once when he handed the reins over to Isaac, he said, “It’s good to have a companion on such a trip. It’s the usual thing to travel in twos, but Brother Andrew came up sick the morning we were to leave.”

  “Were there no other men who could come with you?”

  “Yea, there are many brothers, but they were all about their duties and a bit of solitude is good for the spirit at times.”

  “I guess I’m spoiling that for you,” Isaac said.

  “Not at all, my brother. You appear to have a gift for silence. Not a common gift for one so young.”

  Isaac started to refute him. Deny any gifts. The man was making him into a Shaker before he even got to the borders of the village. Bouncing along hiding under a Shaker hat, practicing the Shaker gift of silence. What other gifts would he have to practice? Would they expect him to dance and whirl the way he’d heard Shakers worshiped?

  He thought about Marian and how solemn she’d looked the last time he’d visited her. Nothing like the little sister who’d trailed after him through the first years of their lives, helping him catch toads and grasshoppers. His little sister Marian from those easy years before the steamboat boiler explosion had taken their father—that sister he could imagine dancing and whirling. It was the new sister Marian, the Shaker sister, he couldn’t imagine doing the same.