The Believer (5 page)

"Where will you get the planks?"

"Off the cowshed out back"

'All right. First help me lay him out proper. Then I'll start digging a grave out by Mama while you build the box:'

It wasn't easy digging. The ground was hard and there were plentiful rocks and roots to prise out of the way. Their dog, Aristotle, lay beside the grave with his black head on white paws and watched her with mournful eyes as if he knew why she was digging. Her father had brought the pup in after their mother died. For Hannah, he said, but he had given the dog its name and Elizabeth thought he had loved the animal most of all.

When Elizabeth straightened up to rest her back, she looked at the dog. "I'm sorry, Aristotle. I am so very sorry. For all of us:"

Payton finished the box before she got halfway deep enough. She stopped digging and helped Payton lift their father into the box on the porch. Hannah had come back from the woods with her skirt tail caught up full of red and gold leaves and some purple flowers she'd found down by the river. With tears flowing now and dripping off her chin, Hannah laid the leaves in the box on top of their father's body. She gave one of the purple flowers to Elizabeth to place inside the box. Elizabeth kissed the mass of curls on top of the child's head and felt a sorrow for the fatherless child that went far beyond tears.

Payton brought a piece of cedar wood he'd whittled and polished. It had no particular shape, but he treasured it for the red and light tan whorls in the wood. He placed it beside their father's arm and looked up at Elizabeth. "Should we say words now? Out of the Good Book:"

"We haven't got the grave ready."

"We need to say the words now so I can nail the top on" Payton looked grim, like someone told he must swim an icy river and so wanting to plunge into the water at once to get the ordeal over and done.

"Very well:"

Elizabeth went inside to get the Bible off her father's desk. She found her scissors and some string before she went back out on the porch. With hands she could not keep from trembling, she tied off three locks of her father's hair and cut them from his head. She gave one to Payton and one to Hannah. The last she placed in the Bible beside the lock of her mother's hair she'd put in there four years earlier. She pulled a few strands of her mother's hair loose and laid them over her father's heart. Then she cut a lock of her own hair and Payton's and Hannah's to place on their father's chest alongside her mother's hair.

"Oh, my father, we will miss you so," she whispered.

Payton read 1 Corinthians 13, the same chapter their father had read when they buried their mother. Hannah read Psalm 23, stumbling over a few words that Elizabeth and Payton whispered along with her. Last, Elizabeth took the Bible and found 1 John 2:25. `And this is the promise that he hath promised us, even eternal life'

Aristotle jumped upon the side of the box and howled. The sound was like a knife in Elizabeth's heart. As she let the Bible fall shut to reach for the dog, a piece of paper fluttered out of the pages. After Elizabeth pulled the dog back and Hannah wrapped her arms around him to stop his howls, Elizabeth picked up the paper. It was the envelope for the bean seeds her father had bought from the Shakers last spring. He had stuck the empty packet in the Bible to remember the kind, for they had produced well.

Elizabeth stuffed the paper in her pocket. Springtime seemed forever away.

After Payton nailed the top onto the box, they left their father's body on the porch to finish digging the grave. Hannah sat down on the porch steps with Aristotle leaning against her legs and would not budge, even though Elizabeth pleaded with her to come with them and not stay alone with the body.

Hannah crossed her arms tightly over her chest and lifted her chin. "I do not fear my dead father."

So Elizabeth left her there and walked with Payton back to the graves behind the cabin just below their garden plot. They took turns with the shovel, one digging while the other used the grubbing hoe to break loose the roots. The sun climbed high in the sky and reflected off the red and golden trees all around them, but they had no eyes for the beauty of the day. Their eyes were on the dirt as they dreaded the sound of the shovel clanging into a new rock that might prove too big to dig around and heave up out of the grave.

As the shadows started falling toward the east, they had the grave shoulder deep. Payton handed her the shovel and said, "I can't dig more without water. And food:"

His face was streaked with sweat and dirt, and Elizabeth knew hers must be as well. She had given no thought to eating, and only after he spoke of it did she realize her thirst. "You're right. I'll keep digging while you go fix something for you and Hannah. There's bread and apple butter in the cupboard. Then you can bring me some water."

Payton looked down at the hard clay dirt under his shoes and back at Elizabeth. "Do you think it might be deep enough already? We could pile these many rocks on top:" He waved his hand at the rocks they'd dug out of the grave.

"It would be best to dig another foot:" Elizabeth pushed the shovel down into the dirt and shoved it deeper with her foot. She ached all over from the work, and her hands were swollen and red with blisters.

"If it's the cholera, who will dig our graves?"

"It wasn't the cholera. We would have begun to sicken by now if it had been" Elizabeth lifted the shovelful of dirt and threw it up and out onto the pile that loomed larger than the hole.

`Are you sure?"

Elizabeth leaned on the shovel and looked at Payton standing above her. "I am sure. Now go get water."

She was bent over working out yet another rock when she heard footsteps coming back. He had only been gone a few minutes, so she thought he must have decided to bring her the water first. It wasn't until the man jumped into the grave behind her and landed heavily that she realized it wasn't Payton, who was always light as a cat on his feet.

She straightened and whirled around. "Colton. What are you doing here?"

She backed away from him until the cool dirt on the side of the grave stopped her. Her skin started crawling even before he stepped closer and put his hand on her shoulder. She made herself not shrug it off as she breathed in and out slowly.

"You should have sent Payton to get me. Grave digging is not woman's work:"

He sounded cross that she had not asked him for help, but she did not want his help. She wanted nothing from him.

"Payton is helping me;' she said briskly. She stared at his face and wondered what about it awoke such dread within her or why his hand on her shoulder was so frightening. Her heart began pounding in her ears. "How did you know of our father?"

"I didn't:' He tightened his hand on her shoulder in a gesture of sympathy. "Hannah told me moments ago. I was just coming to talk with him. He stopped by my house yesterday morning about the money he owes me. You did realize he owed me money, didn't you?" He looked pleased by that fact.

"Father rarely discussed his business with me:" Elizabeth avoided the answer to his question.

"That's too bad. It might have been something you should know." He moved a step closer to Elizabeth until she could smell the pomade on his hair and feel the heat of his body. "We were working out a way for him to eliminate his debt. And he seemed hale and hearty then. Only yesterday. We shared some fresh cider."

"The sickness came on him suddenly. He died in the night."

"So Hannah told me" He put his other hand on her other shoulder and let his eyes drift from her face down her body.

"It might be the cholera:" Elizabeth hoped to scare him back from her. "You best keep your distance:"

He actually laughed, the sound as grating as the scrape of the shovel point across rock. "I think not. I think I will never have to keep my distance from you ever again:"

She put her hands against his chest and tried to push him back from her, but it was like pushing against a stone wall.

"Get away from me!" She put all the force she could into her voice.

Again he laughed. He lifted one of his hands and rubbed the hard tips of his fingers across her cheek. "You might as well learn to like my touch upon you because you are mine now. You no longer have any other choice. You are the payment of your father's debt:"

"He made no such contract with you"

"Oh, but he did. He had no other options. And neither do you. Not if you want a roof over your head and food on the table for your brother and sister." Colton's eyes bore into her.

"We can get by."

"But have you forgotten the debt you owe me? What a shame that the debts of the father can be passed down to the daughter." He pushed his body up against her and shoved her harder against the side of the grave. A root poked into her back. There was no escape.

Elizabeth stayed stiff against him and made her voice icy as she said, "Would you dare violate me in my father's grave? Have you no honor?"

"There is too much weight given to honor in this world," he said, but he stepped back from her. "But perhaps you are right. You need to bury the dead before you can begin your new life with me"

She saw a chance. "Give me a week to grieve my father."

"You don't need a week:" His eyes narrowed on her as he considered her words. He might have been making a deal for a horse. "Two days. And when I return you will marry me willingly, without resistance:"

She did not nod or say yes, but neither did she say no.

He smiled, taking her silence as consent. "Then it is settled," he said. "Now give me the shovel and I will finish your digging"

It didn't seem right to surrender the job to him, but she could not bear another second so close to him. She handed him the shovel and began to climb out of the grave. He put his hand on her backside and pushed her up, groping her with his fingers as he did. It was all she could do not to kick him in the face.

Payton reached down to help her up. "Are you all right, Elizabeth?"

She had no idea how long he'd been standing there or how much he'd heard, but it would do little good to talk of it with him. He was just a boy yet and no match for a man such as Colton Linley.

"As all right as a person can be with her father dead this day." She looked directly into Payton's pale face. "Colton is going to finish the digging for us, and then I feel sure he will help us carry our father to his final resting place before he leaves to let us grieve in private:"

Colton looked up at Payton with a pious look on his face. "Your father was a fine man. So many sorrows in this world, but he's gone on to a better place:"

Elizabeth managed not to throw up until she got to the cabin out of sight of the grave. Payton came up beside her.

"So it is the cholera" His voice was flat, resigned.

She wiped her mouth with the cleanest under-edge of her apron she could find. She kept her eyes on the ground away from Payton. "No. It is Colton who makes me ill"

"We don't have to do as he says"

Elizabeth mashed her mouth together. The bad taste of her vomit clung to her tongue, for her mouth was dry as powder. "I need a drink of water." She started on toward the front of the cabin, but then stopped and turned back to touch Payton's arm. "We will talk about this after we bury our father."

"The Lord will help us find a way," Payton said. "Isn't that what Mama always said?"

"All he found for her was a way home to heaven' Elizabeth regretted the bitter sound of her words even before they were all the way out of her mouth. She added quickly, "But I will pray for a way."

"So will I. A way you can bear."

Colton helped them carry their father's body in the box to the grave. In truth, Elizabeth didn't know how they would have managed it without him there. She tried to be grateful as she thanked him for his help after the last prayer was said and the dirt was heaped in on top of her father. Each shovelful had thudded against her heart. But she felt no bit of gratitude until he mounted his horse and rode away, and then she thanked the Lord for the two days she'd been given.

Payton and Hannah looked as wounded and bruised as she felt as they sat around the table eating their meager supper of bread and milk, for Payton had milked the cow. They tried to talk about what they could do, but their grief sat too heavy on them.