Christmas at Harmony Hill (9 page)

Heather let out a long breath. She was here and here she would stay. At least until the baby came. She had little choice unless the war ended before then and Gideon returned for her. That wasn’t likely no matter how many prayers she sent up for peace. She shut her eyes and remembered the last embrace they’d shared before he marched away from her. She would see him again. She would. Please, Lord, she would.

G
ideon’s division made the last part of the trip to Nashville by boat down the Cumberland River. Gideon worked his way out to a spot close to the rail on the crowded decks where he could see the water flowing past them. He aimed to be where he could jump into the river if the Confederates surprised them with a cannonball to the broadsides. It didn’t matter that he’d never been that good of a swimmer. His swimming would be better than his sinking with the boat.

Jake White laughed at him. “You won’t get a chance to swim. You’re right out here where the sharpshooters can pick you off.”

“No Rebel can shoot that good.” Gideon looked toward the riverbank. It wasn’t actually all that far away. And some of the Rebels were fair shots when they had time to take aim. Sitting up in the trees along the river, they might have plenty of time to steady their shots. “Leastways they haven’t shot good enough to hit me yet,” he added without quite as much confidence in his voice.

“We’ve had the luck of the Irish so far.” Jake settled down beside Gideon. The air off the river was cold and Gideon was glad for Jake’s broad back blocking some of the wind.

“I’m not Irish,” Gideon said.

“I’m Irish enough for the both of us,” Jake said. “I’ll see to it that you make it home to see that wee little bairn after he’s born.”

“And how are you going to do that?” Gideon twisted to look Jake in the face.

“Now think straight, lad. If you were a Johnny Reb sharpshooter with only one shell to spend before a boat full of Yankees got out of range, who would you aim for? A smallish target like you or a big one like me?”

“He might want to prove his skill.” Gideon studied the riverbank again to see if he could catch the glint of light on a gun barrel.

“True enough,” Jake agreed easily. “The Rebels are a strange bunch. That yell of theirs can send chills down a man’s back.”

Gideon shivered as he pulled his jacket closer around him. He’d heard the Rebel yell, seen the charges, been deafened by the cannons, and so far come out with not so much as a scratch. But a man couldn’t be lucky forever when he faced enemy fire. Could be, the coming battle might be his last in spite of what he’d told Heather before they parted.

He smiled, thinking of Heather safe with her family now. Her mother would take care of his Heather Lou and his baby too. He did so want to see that baby. He shut his eyes and imagined the little tyke in Heather’s arms. A tiny boy with dark hair like Heather’s. He wouldn’t wish his red locks and freckles on anybody, even though he was used to them and the jibes they brought. Some things were only funny the first few times a fellow heard them and sometimes not all that funny even then. He’d scraped a lot of knuckles in fistfights before he figured out laughing along with the jokester made for fewer bruises.

But wonder of wonders, Heather hadn’t minded his red hair and freckles. From their very first meeting, she was ready to laugh with him instead of at him. They had laughed about all sorts of things that looked fresh and more wonderful staring at them through eyes of love.

He stared down at the water flowing past, taking him farther away from her, and hated how empty his arms felt. Behind him, Jake had leaned back against the railing and was snoring. The man could sleep anywhere. Something Heather had said about him too. A soldier had to take his rest when and where he could. But sleep had come easier with her by his side. Now miles were between them and he could do nothing but remember the sweet blessing of her head on his shoulder and the touch of her hand on his back.

She was his luck, his gift, his blessing, and his love all rolled up together. He pulled his knees up to his chest and dropped his head down on them. She prayed for him. He had watched her kneel in their tent and silently mouth prayers before she lay down beside him. She asked him once if he prayed. She never saw him bending his head in prayer.

He told her, sure, he prayed. It was just that he wasn’t good with prayer words. Better to let someone else say the prayers and let him do the fighting. Besides, he’d already gotten the answer to his prayers. His Heather Lou.

But now he had no idea how long it would be until she was in his arms again. He was headed toward a new battle with who knew what results. Then again, she was about to enter a battlefield herself. Women died trying to birth babies.

It was no wonder sleep eluded him.

T
he days passed into December. It was peaceful in the cabin with Heather. It somehow felt right to Sophrena, almost as if she had gone back in time to the years before she came to the Shakers. But then she would remind herself that the years before she came to the Shakers were not peaceful. After her marriage, one miserable day had piled onto another in the small house where she and Jerome had started housekeeping. What she was imagining was only a wish of what might have been.

She still felt unsettled when she thought about the future, and when Brother Kenton came to examine Heather or bring her a new tonic, she felt worse than unsettled. She was the same as those foolish young sisters she had once tried to guide along the peaceful path of obedience to the Believers’ rules. Those girls had kept one foot firmly planted in the world, and most had soon let the other foot follow it away from Harmony Hill. They had never wanted to take up their cross and change their thinking.

She had been so sure of the truth then. The Lord had guided her to this village where a new life awaited her. The Lord had blessed her with love here. She rejoiced in picking the fruit of the spirit
and living a simple life. Such a life was a gift. She believed that. She wanted none of the trappings of the world. She had no need of fancy dresses or carriages to ride in like women of the world. She desired nothing more than the opportunity to work with her hands and feel the love of God within her heart.

She was content to let others point the way for her. To do as the Ministry ordered. To whirl and dance to show her love of the Lord. To embrace the Believer’s way. But then she’d turned fifty. The Believers didn’t celebrate the birth dates of their members. It was only another day of no particular importance. Age was of no concern in heaven and so the same was true at Harmony Hill where heaven’s rules were heeded and worldly things forgotten.

But while she’d given her birthdays little thought over the years, the number stayed in her mind. How could one forget the number of years one had been blessed with life? But no number had poked at her the way fifty did, worrying her like a thorn from a blackberry vine that worked deep into her finger and couldn’t be dug out. Temptations she never dreamed would beset her came and sat on her shoulders. Those confessions of wrong thinking she had heard from the novitiates she had once guided toward spiritual purity must have hidden out inside her and now were surfacing one after another.

A month after her birthday, Brother Kenton Todd had come among them from the Union village in Ohio when Harmony Hill was in need of a doctor. Sister Lettie had passed into heaven and Brother Benjamin had developed painful joints that limited his doctoring ability. He’d returned to the New Lebanon village in the East to spend his days compounding new mixtures of herbs in hopes of finding something to relieve the rheumatism pains suffered by him and many of the older Believers.

Something about the new brother had drawn Sophrena’s eyes. Even when she tried most not to notice him, her eyes would seek him out during meeting the way she’d once seen weaker-willed sisters let their gaze be drawn to the brothers’ side of the meetinghouse.
She had zealously taken part in the stomping or shaking songs to rid her mind of such wayward thoughts. She thought she had succeeded. The fretful worry of missing something necessary stayed within her, but she kept her eyes where they were meant to look. She had no desire for forbidden fruit. She only wanted to recapture the peace she’d once known that now seemed to be leaking away from her. The new brother was not the cause of her melancholy. She had surely simply carried that seed forward from her mother.

A couple of months after Brother Kenton came to Harmony Hill, he was in attendance at the same union meeting as Sophrena. They gathered with three other sisters and three other brothers in Brother Jackson’s room to talk of the events of the week. Such meetings were held each week to allow small groups of brothers and sisters to converse. A row of chairs for the brethren and a row of chairs for the sisters were placed across from one another well apart to avoid any possibility of touching during these times of shared words.

That night, Brother Jackson had talked of the war and how those of the world were forced by conscription to fight. He kept warning of Confederate raiding parties in the area who might steal their horses or burn their barns until Sophrena began to wonder if he too struggled with melancholy. After he fell silent, Sister Thelma said the hens had quit laying and there would be only mush and biscuits for the morning meal. Sophrena felt weighted down by their unhappy reports.

But then Brother Kenton began talking about how his spirit had been freed the first time he’d watched the Believers worship at Union village. That had been a mere year before. He’d once been married in the world, but his wife suffered from hysteria and had deserted him to return to the bosom of her mother.

He raised his hands up in front of him to study them before he continued speaking. “These hands were given the gift of healing by the good Lord above, but I had never properly lived for him. Something was always missing in my life. I thought it was the
worldly love of a wife, but the spirit showed me otherwise. I shed the trappings of the world and embraced the simple life.”

He had looked across the space between the lines of chairs and smiled directly at Sophrena. A simple smile that brought sunlight back into the room and made her forget all about hens that didn’t lay eggs and guerilla raiding parties. She dropped her eyes to her hands folded in her lap, but she felt like spinning. And not to shake away the feeling. At that moment, it had not felt sinful. That came later upon recollection of the way her heart had leapt up at the sight of his smile. A smile that meant nothing more than brotherly love as was proper at a union meeting.

When it came her time to speak, her words came out with uncommon hesitancy as she reported on the number of hats the sisters had managed to weave in the week prior. Brother Jackson frowned and told her to speak up for he was hard of hearing, and Sister Emma asked if she might have caught a chill that was giving her a sore throat. At once Brother Kenton told her to come by the infirmary the next day so he could mix her a draught of medicine.

She had not gone to the infirmary. There was no need. Her throat was not sore, and she was wise enough not to purposely seek stumbling blocks. Later Eldress Lilith had taken her to task for not getting treatment for her throat ailment.

“A Shaker must keep her body whole in order to properly perform her duties to the best of her abilities,” the eldress told her.

“Yea,” Sophrena had agreed, and added to her sin by pretending her throat had gotten better overnight when it never ailed to begin with. Even little, unspoken lies wrapped around a person and trapped them in a web of untruth that was hard to escape.

The spring passed and summer brought many chores to keep her hands busy. Others were chosen to guide the novitiates for a season after she confessed her conflicted spirit to Eldress Lilith. An answer to prayers Sophrena had not thought to offer, for she was weary of keeping count of the faults of the new sisters. It was much better to work in the gardens. To plunge her hands into the
dirt. To pluck out the weeds just as she needed to pluck out the weeds of discontent from her heart.

She went out to the gardens each day with willing hands, for it might not be many seasons before the piling on of years sapped her strength for such work. She picked strawberries and beans. She pulled onions, carrots, and beets. The sunshine on her shoulders and bonnet was welcome, and the sweat on her brow, earned and satisfying.

Back in the houses, she prayed at the proper times. She danced without missteps and kept her eyes away from the brethren’s side of the meetinghouse. She hid her malaise except for confessing her lack of proper spirit to Eldress Lilith.

She could not keep all her sins secret. It was wrong to keep any of them secret, but one had to figure out what sin one was committing before one could confess it. At least that was the excuse she made for herself before the devil dug a hole to trip her up. Or if not the devil, some varmint.

Whichever, the hole in the garden row hidden by bean vines was her downfall. She stepped into the hole, twisted her ankle sideways, and fell headlong in the dirt, scattering the beans from her basket. Such a fall could not be hidden. Nor could she keep from gasping from the pain when she tried to stand.

Brother Kenton was called to the garden to determine if bones were broken. The only way to do that was by examination. After he carefully removed her shoe, his long fingers probed her ankle through her stocking. His hands cradled her foot as he gently bent it back and forth. Her breathlessness had not been completely from the pain caused by that movement. The flush on her cheeks not only from the summer sunshine.

He determined her ankle was not broken, only badly sprained. She spent three days in the infirmary with nothing to keep her mind occupied except the basket of hand sewing that was brought to her each morning. Brother Kenton said she must stay off her feet, but that didn’t mean her hands could not work. Or that her eyes
and ears would not be hearing and seeing the doctor as he went about his duty of tending to the sick.

Each day she was there, he checked her ankle, healing hands touching her skin with great gentleness. At other times, he came and leaned in the doorway for no other purpose than to ask how she was doing or to comment on how one of the other sisters or brothers was healing. Always smiling. Always cheerful. Always looking at her as though she mattered.

But of course, she mattered. All her brethren treasured her as a sister just as she treasured them. It was the way of the Believers. To love all the same. Whatever sickness of the spirit that was trying to overwhelm her was all that made her imagine anything different. That was what had planted in her head the idea that Brother Kenton was noticing her as Sophrena who wasn’t yet too old to dance instead of simply Sister Sophrena who filled a spot on the far side of the meetinghouse.

On the second morning Sophrena was in the infirmary, Sister Edna brought a basket of dresses to be hemmed. When she passed Brother Kenton leaving Sophrena’s room, she bent her head and muttered a morning greeting to his cheery hello. She watched him with a dark scowl as he left the room.

“That brother lacks the proper gravity.” Sister Edna let out a huff of breath as she set the basket down with a thump beside Sophrena’s chair.

“I should hope there’s no rule against a cheerful heart.” Sophrena shifted her foot on the cushiony pillow Brother Kenton had just brought her. “Is not that what we should all have as we go about our duties?”

Sister Edna turned her scowl on Sophrena. “A Believer needs to mind his duties with a serious demeanor and attention to his work. I should think especially a doctor who tends to the ill and injured. Brother Benjamin never went around with such a face.”

“Brother Benjamin was generally of a good humor.” Sophrena did not look at Sister Edna for fear the woman might note Sophrena’s
good humor and find fault in it. Instead she pulled one of the dresses out of the basket and arranged it on her lap before she picked up her needle.

“But he was not continually laughing like a child tickling his own nose with a hen’s feather,” Sister Edna said. “Such is not proper for a brother with the task of healing.”

“I seem to recall reading a Bible verse in Proverbs about how a merry heart worketh good like a medicine. If so, then surely Brother Kenton will add power to his draughts with his happy ways.”

Sophrena took great care in threading her needle and finding her thimble. When at last she did look up, Sister Edna’s eyes were mere slits as she stared at Sophrena.

“If I were you, Sister Sophrena, I would be very careful which draughts of medicine you are hankering after. I sense sin is ready to overtake you.”

“Nay, I pray not.” Sophrena calmly turned up the hem on the dress sleeve before she looked up at Sister Edna. “The two of us have long been sisters together, so I know you will pray the same. Come back after the workday and I will have the sewing finished.”

She had been glad to see Sister Edna go with her sour spirit, but as she hemmed the sleeve with tiny stitches, she knew Sister Edna was right. That was why, in spite of Brother Kenton saying she should rest her ankle for a full week, she had gone back out to the gardens after three days.

And now here she sat beside young Heather with a basket of sewing between them. Heather had asked to help and Sophrena did not have the heart to refuse her, even though she often had to pull out the girl’s stitches after she had gone to bed to redo them on the morrow. The girl never knew since all the dresses were so alike. She wore one of them herself now. It looked unusual with the mound of baby growing under the skirt.

This time Sophrena could not leave to go back to the gardens to avoid being near Brother Kenton. As she made her stitches and listened to Heather talk of her husband, she could not be sure the
devil was not throwing more temptations in her path. But what if it wasn’t the devil’s doing? What if it was the Lord knowing her need and answering her prayers?