The Blessed

by Ann H. Gabhart

  “I’ve been told they don’t believe in families.” She stared at the flame burning steadily inside the glass chimney of the lamp.

  “Nay, that’s not true at all,” Preacher Palmer said.

  Nay. He was talking like those Shaker men with their yeas and nays. She let her eyes go to the preacher’s face. He had already stepped across the divide into the willingness to follow their ways.

  He kept talking. “They believe in family in a better way. A more united way where none are excluded and all are brought into proper fellowship with one another and the Lord. Brothers and sisters, all. Just as the Bible commands. Love thy brother.”

  “And sister,” Lacey said in a voice not much above a whisper.

  He must have heard something in her voice then. Some reluctance to accept his word. “I thought you would welcome this.”

  Lacey didn’t look down even though she wanted to. She kept her eyes on the preacher’s face as she said, “They divide families.”

  “We’re already divided. Have ever been. You told them our marriage was an abomination. You can’t be sorry to wipe that away.”

  “But what of Rachel?”

  His eyes pierced her in the lamplight. “What of Rachel?”

  “She needs me.”

  “The Lord takes care of little children. And so do the Shakers. They have many orphans among them.”

  “Rachel isn’t an orphan.”

  “How can you say she’s not? A child abandoned on a doorstep with no mother to claim her.”

  “I claim her. Miss Mona claimed her. You claim her.”

  “I never claimed her.” He put both hands flat on the table and leaned toward Lacey as he continued speaking, each word getting a little louder. “Never. She has never been more than an abandoned waif in need of care. Care she will abundantly receive among the good Shaker sisters. She has nothing to do with me. Or you. You are not her mother.”

  She wanted to tell him how wrong he was, but the fire in his eyes burned away her words. She stared down at her hands and prayed for courage to speak. After a minute she said, “What if I don’t want to go with you?”

  “Lord, grant me patience,” he whispered under his breath. He sat back in his chair, and when he next spoke, his voice sounded tired. “You don’t have to go with me. You’re my wife, but you can go to town and file to have the union dissolved. I don’t know what might happen to you then. You can’t stay here. The church owns this house. I own a bit of land to the south, but that will go over to the Shakers when I sign the Covenant of Belief. That won’t be right away. There’s a trial period, they say. But there’s no house on the property. Mona and I had hopes once of building there, but the church built this house for us close to the church building first. I suppose you might go to your father if you can find him or perhaps hire out to someone. That might have been what you should have done before.”

  “Except for Rachel,” Lacey said quietly.

  “You will have to choose whatever way you think best, but I will choose Rachel’s way. She has never called you mother.”

  “What difference does a name make?”

  “True enough.” He leaned his head against his hand and rubbed his forehead back and forth. “‘Art thou loosed from a wife? Seek not a wife.’ Oh, that I had attended to the apostle’s words. You carry the name wife, but it’s a word without meaning for the two of us. That you cannot deny. Nor can I.”

  Lacey felt a blanket of guilt fall around her shoulders. He was right. She had denied him the rights of a husband. She had driven him to this decision. She swallowed hard and forced out the words as she peeked up at him. “I can change. Be the wife you asked me to be.”

  “You would prostitute yourself for the child. A child conceived in sin and clothed in temptation.” His eyes burned into her, condemning her words. “The Lord sent the Shaker brothers here to keep our feet off that sinful path. ‘For our transgressions are multiplied before thee, and our sins testify against us.’”

  Lacey not only knew he was speaking Bible words, she knew they carried truth. She looked back down at her hands folded in her lap. She was beaten. Her sins were testifying against her. She was clinging to what she wanted without opening her heart to what the Lord intended for her. The way she was fighting against humbling her spirit was doing nothing but trapping her in a deeper quagmire with every word.

  But the Lord couldn’t want her to give up Rachel. The preacher, yes. She could give him up without a second thought. The preacher’s house, yes. But not Rachel. She couldn’t give up Rachel. She’d just have to turn this mess over to the Lord. To trust him to make it right while she kept walking the path set before her, even if she couldn’t see where it was leading her.

  What was it Miss Mona always told her when she was worrying over something? There wasn’t no need in borrowing trouble from tomorrow. If such was laying in wait, it would get to her soon enough. Best to keep praying. Keep hoping the trouble would slide off in the shadows before she reached the valley. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me.

  The preacher pushed his chair back from the table and stood up. “You have to decide, Lacey.”

  “When are we going?” She looked up at him, surrendering her will.

  He nodded a bit in acknowledgment of her decision before he said, “The Shakers are bringing a wagon to pack our things in tomorrow.”

  “We’ll be using our things then at this new town?”

  “Nay. All will be given over to the Shakers. They’ll use what they can, sell or give away what holds no use for them. All property there is owned in common.”

  “But what if we don’t stay?”

  “We’ll stay.” His shadow in the light of the lamp reached all the way to the just-washed kitchen ceiling. He looked as fierce as she had always imagined the Old Testament prophets when they made their pronouncements of the Lord’s coming punishment for evil behavior, but then he changed his words. “I’ll stay.”

  “The church here will have no leader.” The thought made Lacey sad.

  “Those who want a leader will come with us. Those determined to continue on the wrong way have rejected leadership.”

  “Are some others convinced to try the Shaker way?”

  “The Whites and the Barlows, they’re considering it. And others may follow in the weeks ahead when they acknowledge the error of their ways.”

  “It’s a way you taught them.”

  “A man must stand ready to follow the leading of the spirit. If I were to turn from this, I’d be tormented with failures. My sins.”

  “They don’t sin at the Shaker town?”

  “They remove all reason for sin and are ready to confess their wrongs. You will see.” He stepped back to the table and twisted down the wick of the lamp until the flame guttered out. He stared down at her in the moonlight flowing through the window. “Our house will be cleansed of sin. A cleansing we need. You will see.”

  The next morning when she told Rachel they were leaving the only home the child had ever known, she looked at Lacey with enormous eyes and hugged her Maddie doll tighter, but she didn’t cry. She trusted Lacey the way Lacey was telling herself to trust the Lord. Neither one of them mentioned the preacher closed up in his room doing his own packing or soul cleansing or whatever. He hadn’t even eaten his breakfast. Just came out for a cup of coffee and carried it back into his bedroom with barely more than a grunt of greeting.

  There wasn’t any reason for talking anyhow. They’d done that the night before. Lacey just set his plate of eggs and biscuits in the warming oven and ate her oatmeal with Rachel. She didn’t bother with feeding the fire in the cookstove. She’d cooked her last meal on that stove in Miss Mona’s kitchen. She turned her mind from that thought before tears could steal into her eyes and kept spooning in her oatmeal to set the right example for Rachel. Food wasn’t to be wasted.

  It didn’t take long to pack up the dishes, even with the way her fingers w
anted to linger, tracing the rose pattern on Miss Mona’s Sunday plates. If the preacher was right and they weren’t going to be able to use them in the Shaker town, then she should have let Miss Sadie Rose carry them home. At least that way Miss Mona would be remembered. But none of the church people had come around. Lacey supposed they’d given up fighting the preacher’s vision of truth.

  Lacey stood up and stretched. Rachel was pulling all the pans out of the bottom of the cabinet, enjoying the clatter they made. Lacey peeked out the back window toward the church. The roof looked sturdy as ever. Not in the least bit of danger of falling down. But she supposed there was more than one way for a roof to fall in on a church. Certainly the preacher turning from the beliefs he’d been preaching since before the church roof was built was a way none of them might have ever imagined.

  The clock in the front room bonged out the hour. Ten strikes. She didn’t have time for woolgathering, but she didn’t bend back to her work at once. Instead she looked from the church roof down to the graveyard. The sun was bouncing off the headstones. Markers testifying to lives lived and lost. What marker would there be to show her time here? Would the echo of her footsteps on the stairs up to the attic room haunt the next people who lived here? Would her foolish dreams of someday knowing true love stay captured in the mirror where she’d watched her face go from a child to a woman? No need mourning those dreams now. They’d died the day she’d stood in that preacher’s parlor in the town and let them think she said “I do.”

  She could see Miss Mona’s headstone. She wanted to just forget the packing chores and walk over there to see if Miss Mona might speak some wisdom out of the grave to her. Lacey stepped out on the porch where she could see the grave better. The yellow dandelion blooms had all turned to fluffs of white. Thousands of seeds waiting for the breeze to carry them away. Not caring where, but ready to take root and bloom wherever they found themselves next spring. Maybe that was Miss Mona’s wisdom to her. To be ready to take root and bloom no matter where the winds of life were blowing her.

  Rachel came out the back door to lean against Lacey. “Can I dig my worms up out in the garden and take them with us?”

  Lacey smiled down at her. “No, they wouldn’t want to leave their home dirt.”

  “We don’t want to leave either.” Rachel looked up at Lacey. “Do we?”

  “Think of it as an adventure. Something new.” Lacey kept the smile on her face and the worry out of her voice.

  “Like in a Maddie story?” Rachel looked hopeful. “She has adventures.”

  “She does.”

  Rachel’s hopeful look faded. She stared down at her bare feet and worked her toes against the wooden porch. “I’m not as brave as Maddie.”

  Lacey stooped down to look directly in Rachel’s face. “Neither am I, but we’ll be brave enough.”

  “Will you help me be brave, Lacey? The way you did when Mama died?”

  “I will. And the Lord will help us both. Your mama always said we could count on that.” Lacey touched Rachel’s cheek. “Another thing you can count on is that there’ll be worms in the gardens at the Shakers’ town. I’ve even heard tell that they have worms that make silk. Can you imagine that?”

  Back in the house Lacey took the rose-patterned plates out of the packing crate and set them up on the kitchen shelf. Miss Sadie Rose would find them. It didn’t take long to pack up the rest of the kitchen things.

  After she fed Rachel a slice of bread and honey at noon and the preacher finally ate his cold eggs, she sent Rachel out to the garden to tell her worms goodbye. Preacher Palmer went out to the horse shed and left Lacey alone in the house. She was looking through Miss Mona’s books when a man spoke behind her.

  “You might as well leave those here. The Shakers don’t have any use for storybooks. They’ll let you keep the Bible maybe. Nothing else.”

  13

  When the young woman on the floor visibly jumped, Isaac wished his words back. He hadn’t meant to startle her. Or discourage her. From the look on her face as she jerked around to stare up at him, he’d done both.

  Her wide brown eyes studied him with no hint of shyness. She was very pretty. He felt a flash of guilt for noting that, as if the thought made him unfaithful to his beautiful Ella with her light blue eyes and china-doll pale skin. This girl had no fear of the sun. The scattering of freckles across her nose was proof of that. She was sitting on a bright rag rug with her faded yellow skirt hiked up to reveal bare feet and a generous portion of leg. A fact she seemed totally unaware of, since she made no attempt to yank her skirt down to regain her modesty. Books lay all around her on the floor. Some in stacks. Some open so the words could spill out to her eyes. Isaac hadn’t seen that many books just tossed about since he’d left home after his father died.

  His father had liked books. Carried one with him everywhere he went in case he had a quiet moment. When he was reading, no matter where that was, he would read snippets out loud to whoever was close by, as if the words were such a treasure they had to be shared. Isaac always watched his father’s face to decide if he should embrace the beauty of the words or chuckle at their cleverness.

  At the McElroys’, books other than the Bible were considered a waste of time and money. Then at Ella’s house, books abounded again, but mostly law volumes lined up in handsome rows on the judge’s library shelves with no expectation of anybody other than the judge pulling them off. Ella’s thin volumes of poetry and weepy romance tales were stashed neatly away on a shelf in the morning room.

  Isaac spotted a few of the same titles in the girl’s books in front of him. None of the stories of frontiers conquered that had fed Isaac’s imagination and led him down the sorry path that had caused so much grief. Perhaps it was better to read only the Bible as Mrs. McElroy had insisted and now the Shakers were telling him. The Bible and the teachings of their Mother Ann that would help him abide by the many Shaker rules.

  He was surely breaking some of those rules now as he stood above the girl near enough to touch if he reached toward her. Definitely a sin in the eyes of the Shakers who kept men and women forever at a distance for fear that even the incidental brush against a sister’s arm in passing on the stairs might plunge a brother into sin.

  He supposed a proper Shaker novitiate would turn and go back out to the porch to wait as Brother Verne had told him to do. But instead he stayed where he was and waited for the young woman to say something. Since he’d had no way of knowing anyone was in the house when he stepped inside to find a drink of water, being near the young woman wasn’t an intended breach of the rules. Intended or not, he would have to confess his disobedience of not staying on the porch. Obedience was highly regarded among the Shakers. Especially by Brother Verne.

  It wasn’t that Isaac didn’t want to keep the Shaker rules. In the time he’d been at Harmony Hill, he had surrendered his will in a dedicated attempt to live as they instructed. He no longer allowed himself to dream of the West and the adventures that had once beckoned him. He had destroyed enough people already with those foolish dreams. He had learned to kneel on his right knee first at the many prayer times. He had conditioned himself to begin every climb up the stairs with his right foot and to keep in mind the proper door for the brothers to enter the buildings. He rose without complaint at the sound of the rising bell and worked diligently at whatever task they set him to. He filled his stomach with the Shakers’ good food and thought it only right to expend his muscle power in payment. He even dutifully listened to their sermons and practiced their dances and confessed enough sins to satisfy Elder Homer. But he wasn’t a Shaker. Not the way Marian was.

  The week before, he had talked with Marian in what the Shakers called a Union meeting. Six sisters across from six brothers in the brothers’ room, sitting in the plain straight chairs made by the brothers. The rows of chairs were placed far enough apart that there was no danger of the brothers and sisters touching. The sisters had shed their aprons but wore their caps and the wide white col
lars over their bosoms. Marian was the youngest among them, but in spite of the bloom of youth on her cheeks, she too looked plain as if that was part of the uniform costume. Beauty of the spirit was to be desired. Outward beauty meant nothing. Or so Brother Verne had told him more than once.

  She was well satisfied with her life there, Marian assured Isaac before adding that she hoped he too would find the same satisfaction in time. After the other women nodded their approval of Marian’s words, they moved on to talk of the week’s planting and how the strawberries were beginning to ripen and who had received the gifts of the spirit. Some young sister at the Children’s House had claimed to be visited by angels and had neglected her chores to frolic in the meadow with these heavenly visitors, but none of the sisters or brothers seemed upset about that or to doubt the truth of the young sister’s vision.

  Isaac said little. What was there for him to say? The questions he might have liked to put to Marian were not for the ears of any sister or brother other than his birth sister, and especially not for Brother Verne to hear. The man had a way of sifting and measuring each and every word out of Isaac’s mouth for signs of worldliness and improper thought.

  Brother Verne would be sure to condemn him for speaking to the young woman in front of him instead of slipping unnoticed back out to the porch. He could have. With her head bent, she’d been totally absorbed in her books as she stroked their covers and opened one to run her finger across a line or two inside. He watched her a moment before he spoke, imagining his own hands holding those books, his own eyes receiving the gift of their words.

  But it wasn’t only the books that held his eyes. The girl had too, even before he spoke and she looked up at him. She looked so vulnerable with her hair falling forward to reveal the delicate skin on her neck. He wanted to help her even before he knew what help she might need.

  That didn’t mean he had forgotten Ella. It had only been six months since she died. Six years could pass and he wouldn’t forget her. Every night when he lay down on the narrow Shaker cot, he fought off sleep long enough to bring Ella’s face up in front of his eyes. While he had left her body in the cold grave on the Louisville hillside, he would never desert her memory. No matter how much time went by. Atonement demanded as much from him. He could never look at another woman in the same way he had looked at Ella.