The wagon rolled into view just as Amy was emerging from the house. Notaro drove it up to the pike and stopped, and Lavinia and Mr. Charter climbed down from the driver’s box. Notaro gave Kate a neutral once-over, then his glance flicked to Amy but as quickly darted away. His affected disinterest in Amy did not escape Kate, but she had a more pressing issue to resolve.
As her father came around the lead horses, she asked him, “Did you see Vern?”
Before he could answer, Lavinia interjected, “Katherine, your sister is now mistress of a great estate. She’s helpmate to God’s chosen prophet. She isn’t just sitting there in the house waiting for us to call.”
“But you saw her?”
“Kate, we didn’t,” said Mr. Charter with more compassion. “We did not attend the sermon in the main house. The reverend instructed us to attend the meeting in the village church instead. It’s his wish that we, his lieutenants, have opportunity to hear all the preachers who’ve come to Harbinger. He wants us to acquaint ourselves with them, make them feel welcome, make them feel their message matters to the community. You see, they aren’t all death on a sermon the way Reverend Fitcher is, and having us there lends support. Sometimes he even asks us to preach the sermon ourselves.”
“But she hasn’t even sent us a letter, not even a note.”
“Not so,” replied Lavinia, and she produced a small wax-sealed envelope. “See, Katherine, you jump to conclusions.” She smiled, a look more of triumph than of sympathy.
Kate took the envelope. She looked from one to the other of them. “But you didn’t see her?”
“The reverend gave us her note,” explained Mr. Charter. “You see, Katie, there are early morning sermons, and noontime ones as well. Meals are eaten in shifts, so someone is preaching before each of those. She might attend any one of them on any given day. We could go to hear a sermon there and not see hide nor hair of Vernelia for weeks at a time. Months even. Lavinia’s right. She’s now a very busy woman. If you heard the list of duties she has…”
Although their answer did not satisfy, Kate capitulated. It was more important to read the letter than to argue pointlessly. “Thank you,” she told them. “Thank you for giving me this.” She turned then, and caught Amy mooning at Notaro behind them. Amy saw her and quickly went to the horses, taking one by the bridle. She was going to help walk them around.
“Here, Amelia,” Mr. Charter said, “let me help you.” He did not notice the blush on her cheek.
Lavinia said, “You’ll want to go read your sister’s letter,” which was her roundabout way of discharging Kate from her duties for the time being.
Kate thanked her and ran into the house.
Dearest sisters,
I hardly know where to begin. Life here is a bustle. Everything is in a state of constant flux. One family arrives and is welcomed and settled in, and before I can even draw a breath, another shows up at the gates and requires my attention. I’m sure you know this, since it’s you and Papa who let them in.
Elias is such an extraordinary man. He seems to have boundless energy. From the moment we all arise until—well, until after I myself have retired, he tirelessly oversees everything. He works in the fields and in the village. There is no place here you won’t find him. And he asks so little of us all. We have only to open our hearts and place our souls in his keeping for life to be good. We are God’s chosen. He makes us so.
I know that you desire for me to pay a visit. Your wishes have been conveyed by Papa and Lavinia through Elias. If time permits, of course I will come. However, even if it does not, you know that we shall all be together in eternity soon enough, and afterward will never be parted again.
I am happy. Really very happy. Please do not think otherwise or worry yourselves on my behalf. Obey Papa in all things and prepare yourselves for the time to come.
Your loving sister,
Vern
Before giving the letter to Amy, Kate read it through twice. When she was finished, Amy set it down and said, “She’s all swelled with her position, isn’t she? She’ll come visit us if time permits. As if her life is so terribly busy she can’t spare even an hour.”
“Exactly,” Kate replied. “It’s not believable, is it?”
“No,” Amy agreed, but she had arrived at a different conclusion than Kate. “She’s just full of herself, is all. The same as when she told us she was a woman now because she’d been proposed to, while we were still girls.”
“That wasn’t what she said, Amy. She even apologized that it sounded so.”
Amy would hear none of this defense. She was convinced that Vern was more than happy to have divested herself of both the family and all the chores she had, all of which Amy had inherited, or so she maintained. Papa and Lavinia had given her all Vern’s chores as a punishment for her behavior at the wedding.
She’d complained of a terrible headache the day after, but that hadn’t kept her father from delivering a protracted lecture about the inherent corruption of her soul and the almost certain damnation awaiting her if she didn’t change her ways. Amy would have liked to have told him that she couldn’t be damned if she was saved at Harbinger, but her head hurt too much to say anything at all. She just wanted to be left alone. They sent her to her room, but when she emerged, she discovered that she was now expected to do everything that Vern had been responsible for. Kate didn’t have to do anything extra. At that point, Amy would have done whatever it took to get married, to get away from the family and the chores. She hated all of them, but Vern especially. She wasn’t about to change her opinion of her sister’s dismissal of them on Kate’s say-so.
Kate dropped the subject. One thing she had learned since Vern’s marriage was that, given the choice, Amy would side with Lavinia against her. It seemed to be Amy’s method of punishing Kate, although Kate had no idea what she’d done to deserve it. After all, she hadn’t gotten drunk at the wedding and she hadn’t chosen who did which of Vern’s chores. In fact, given who had made those choices, it seemed truly perverse that Amy sided with Lavinia on anything. Kate protected herself now by defusing arguments, by walking away from them, by keeping her opinions more to herself. Part of the reason she missed Vern so much was because she missed having someone to share her thoughts with.
The problem with Vern’s letter was that it rang so falsely. Vern’s proclamations of her happiness seemed too conspicuous, more as if Vern didn’t believe any of it herself but knew she had to say so. It might have been different if Papa had received the letter directly from Vern, but since he hadn’t, Kate was disinclined to believe its contents. Of course Papa’s explanation of why they didn’t see her made perfect sense in its way, and should have set her mind at ease; but it was all somehow too tidy. She had no more time to dwell upon it then because Lavinia called them to dinner.
After the meal, Amy went out by herself. Kate had the responsibility of cleaning up, while Mr. Charter and Lavinia retired to the parlor.
Amy went out to commune with God. She took her Bible and left the house.
Almost as soon as they’d settled in after Vern’s wedding, Amy had begun to ask permission to go out and “walk with God.” Sometimes it was in the afternoon, sometimes the evening. It wasn’t every day, but she was almost always gone for an hour or more. Mr. Charter of course approved of her private retreats, pouncing on them as an indication that his daughter was trying to make up for her ungoverned behavior at the wedding.
By the time her chores were finished, Kate had no idea where Amy had gone. Her father and Lavinia were seated in the parlor, discoursing on the sermon they’d listened to in the village and on Fitcher’s preparations for a crusade to Pittsburgh. “The place is a locus for many people who are setting forth into the wilderness,” explained Mr. Charter. “Many people who are dissatisfied with their lives. They haven’t found fulfillment. They’re looking for something and they hope to find it out in the world where society has yet to go. It is these minds, these seeking people whom Reverend Fit
cher hopes to persuade. He can offer them the truth they hunger for. That we all hunger for.”
“You’ll be going with him?” Kate asked.
“Yes, both of us. You and your sister will be in charge of the house.”
“And Vern, is it likely she’ll accompany him, too?”
Mr. Charter puzzled for a moment. “I don’t know.” He looked to Lavinia for an answer, and she said, “It’s as likely she will as that she’d stay behind and look after Harbinger while he’s gone.”
Kate looked out the window. The sun was setting. She wondered suddenly how Amy could read her Bible in the dark. She arose and bid them a good night.
In her room, she sat awhile in the twilight. She held Vern’s letter, although she could barely see the writing. Her doubts continued, but were formless, leading her nowhere. Why, she asked the shadows, was she the only one in the house who considered Vern’s absence peculiar? Was she simply being willful and impatient, as Lavinia always told her? Yes, she was obstinate, but things that were wrong ought to be challenged. Though she didn’t wish to admit it, perhaps Vern really was dismissing them in some fashion. Certainly, she knew how to put on airs.
Unhappy with her conclusions, Kate finally removed most of her clothes and lay down in the warm night air.
When Amy returned, the room was dark. She had a candle with her and set it on the dresser. She placed her Bible beside it. Kate’s eyes were closed, and Amy quietly took off her shoes, then started to undress. When she drew off her chemise, pine needles and leaves sprinkled out. Amy knelt to sweep them up. When she looked up again, Kate was staring right at her. Guiltily, Amy said, “I was staring at the stars and I tripped over a root. I was with our Lord.”
Kate said, “You mean, our Lord the holy wagon driver.”
Amy blushed and lowered her head. She gathered up all the debris that had sprinkled out and carried it to the window where she threw it outside.
“What have you been doing, Amy?” Kate’s question was too simple to get around, and it implied that Kate already knew what she’d been doing.
Amy had no good story to offer in place of the truth. She finally went to Kate’s bed and sat. “You can’t tell,” she pleaded. “You have to promise you won’t. I love him, you can’t tell anybody.”
“Notaro?” Kate asked. “You love him?”
Amy nodded. “He isn’t like you think,” she said.
“Tell me.”
It had begun the evening he’d driven them home from Vern’s wedding. He’d helped everybody out of the wagon except for Amy. Her head still spun from the champagne she’d drunk. She had one foot on the edge of the wagon but she couldn’t figure out how to navigate from there. Notaro had caught her around the waist with both hands and lifted her safely to the ground. Then he’d nuzzled her neck and kissed her. Everyone else was walking away in the dark, not paying the slightest attention. The two of them had been kissing at the wedding, too, behind some bushes, and she hadn’t minded at all. Amy had told herself she was going to discover what Vern bragged about, and really it was pretty fine. She liked kissing.
At the wagon, however, he only kissed her a little, then he whispered that he would come calling later on, as soon as things got back to normal “out at the place.”
Afterward, between her fierce hangover and her father’s scolding, she convinced herself that she’d seen the last of him, that she had been nothing but a quick bit of fun to him.
About three days later, she went out to the privy and he jumped out of the woods and nearly scared her to death. He had stood out there for over an hour, hoping to see her. He’d swept her up in his arms and, laughing, had kissed her again. She wasn’t drunk that time, and she decided that she liked him.
His duties for Harbinger took him into town nearly every other day for supplies of some kind. Nobody paid much mind to how long he was gone.
He was rough and uncouth and far too interested in what lay beneath her clothes, which interest she rebuffed. If that was all she’d meant to him, he could have driven off right then the way she half expected he would. But he didn’t. He was genuinely eager for her company, which no one else in the house seemed to be. Papa was still angry at her, and Lavinia had piled on all her new chores.
At that first meeting, she and Notaro made a pact to keep an eye out for each other. She would watch for the wagon, and he would try to signal her as he went by, so that she’d know whether he would be stopping or not. Usually, he met her on the way back, before he’d reached the pike. That gave her ample time to finish up chores or make herself scarce without anyone noticing where she’d gone. That was when she’d come up with the idea of going off to commune with God.
The next time they met, he told her his first name, which was Michael. She told him they had a spirit living in their walls called Samuel. His arm about her, Notaro snorted and replied, “He can’t be of as much use to you as I am.”
A few times he brought liquor with him, a jug purchased in town just for the two of them. She’d developed a strong fondness for it. She liked the way the world grew softer when she was drinking with Michael Notaro, and she didn’t mind the way his hands roamed her body then. She could close her eyes and forget everything else, and lose herself in sensation, in the crinkling of the leaves under her head, in the warmth of his breath, the way his fingers kneaded her.
He had more interest than that in her or she would have spurned him. In any case she wasn’t about to let him have his way completely. Vern had told her to always keep something back if she wanted to keep a man interested in her. Of course, Vern had said a lot of things, only some of which were to be believed. The French boy, Henri, hadn’t really been the wonderful lover Vern made out—Amy knew it, even though her sisters had hidden the affair from her. But he’d lived just up the street, and she had seen him plenty of times. He hadn’t even looked as old as Vern; and Amy had suspected he was interested in her, too, though for once she was smart enough not to say so. About not being free with her favors, however, Vern seemed to be right.
Notaro talked about how things were inside Harbinger, especially how strict Fitcher was with the people. Was he mean? she asked. No, that wasn’t it. It was just that he expected them to stick to a rigid structure of his devising. One of the most inflexible requirements was the segregating of the sexes, men from women. As a result, almost all mixing between them was organized by Fitcher and under his scrutiny.
Notaro had said, “He knows everything everyone is doing, even before they do it. Sometimes before they know they’re goin’ to do it. Like he can guess at what’s in their mind. He come to my town down south winter before last. My pa’s a drunk an’ my ma’s no good, and they got no sense of things, ’cept maybe to kill each other, and me as well. I didn’t have nothing and wasn’t going to have nothing later on. Then there comes Elias Fitcher, telling us all that there ain’t gonna be no later on. That we’s all doomed to an eternity in the lives we’ve made unless we change our ways. He roped me in with that picture—I sure didn’t want to go through forever with my ma and pa tearing at each other and me in between. I needed saving more ’n most, and it was like he could see that. Like he could tell.
“So I followed him here and he puts me to work straightaway. Hard work, too. I helped the cooper and the ’smith, and even gutted some steers, but mostly I listened to when he needed something done, and I always stepped up and did it. And a’fore long I got kind of important. Like how I got to hold the ring for your sister. He gives me things to occupy myself. Fill my time, ’cause he knows if I have things to do, I won’t think so much and I won’t get into trouble. Idle hands make trouble. So now I got a place and I don’t need nothing else. He says so, he says, boy, you’re better off here than in perdition. We’s your family now and will be forever more. No need to worry about that. This family forgives, too, he says, but you ain’t gonna give people cause to have to forgive you, are you? Of course, I says no. I know if I say yes, I’m gonna get chucked right out that gate before
the forgiving starts. Now he forgives me when I do wrong. Guess I do it plenty, too. He’s always forgiving me. He could forgive Judas. So everyone, they love him, you know, even though he’s a hard man. He has to be, to save us all. To get us all through the gates.
“And then I seen you.”
At that moment, Amy had melted. It wasn’t just the secret pleasure of the assignations anymore. It was love, pure and simple.
Elias Fitcher had taught Michael Notaro how to interact, how to be around people, which he hadn’t known how to do on his own. Fitcher had prepared him, but he hadn’t known what he was being prepared for until Amy had appeared.
The good thing was, she lived outside the community. Inside, too many eyes were watching. Secret meetings were nearly impossible to arrange when everybody was kept so well apart.
If they were careful how they went, there would be no repercussions out here; no one would discover them. And before the end time arrived, Notaro swore, he would get Fitcher’s blessing to marry her. They would arrive at “them shinin’ gates of Heaven together.” Finally, then, he had confessed his love for her, too. There was no one in the world for him except Amy.
“Samuel told Vern that you and I would both have suitors before the time was up,” Amy explained. “He was right about Vern, and look, he’s right about me. Kate, he’s going to be right about you, too. I just know it.”
Kate was too astonished by the elaborate deception Amy had orchestrated to dispute it. Whether or not she believed the prophecies of the fugitive ghost, she believed that Amy had found love. Nevertheless, her response to the confession was to take her sister’s hands and say, “Please, be very careful, Amelia.”
“I will, of course I will, Kate. I have been.”
“But I’ve found you out. You mustn’t let any others.”
“I know.” Amy didn’t want to dwell on the dangers. She had pretended they didn’t exist for too long to confront them now; in the same way, she didn’t want to think about how blasphemous it probably was to use God as an excuse this way. But she couldn’t help it, she couldn’t give up Michael Notaro now.
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