The Blessed (10 page)

“Nay.” Brother Asa smiled broadly. “None of the sort you may be imagining. The punishment would be in the loss of harmony with your fellow Believers.”

Isaac had wanted to say that he wasn’t a fellow Believer. He didn’t even know what the Shakers did believe except the little Marian had tried to tell him. He’d paid scant attention to her words about believing in the second coming of Christ. He hadn’t even given much consideration to the first coming of Christ, in spite of his mother’s and Mrs. McElroy’s admonitions that he would face a life of ruin if he didn’t look to the Lord for help.

And now here he was in just such a ruined life, following after Brother Verne to work long hours in the fields, tamping seeds into the ground. Listening to Brother Verne instruct him on precepts of the Shakers’ Mother Ann. Learning songs about simple gifts. Practicing dance steps that Brother Verne claimed were worship that would open him up to receive the spirit. Assuming postures of silent prayer upon rising in the morning, before and after every meal, and before lying down on the narrow cot at night. Kneeling on the proper knee first to keep from hearing Brother Verne’s displeasure with Isaac’s inattention to the rules.

Isaac had yet to determine what spirit the dances would bring. He hadn’t been to a meeting in their worship house. Nor did he have any prayer words in his head when he knelt along with all the other brethren. He was empty of prayers. Empty of all thoughts as he obediently followed the unsmiling Brother Verne from duty to duty.

Brother Verne took his task of guiding Isaac along the Shaker pathway with solemn diligence. He was as different from Brother Asa as night from day. Tall and so slim that his shirt hung loose from his shoulders and was only kept from billowing out from his body like a flag in the breeze by the suspenders that held up his trousers. His full head of hair, as dark brown as his eyes, seemed proof he wasn’t old, but it was hard for Isaac to think of him being young.

When Isaac didn’t restrain his curiosity and asked how old he was, Brother Verne frowned at the intrusive question. “The counting of the years of a man’s life seems to me a bothersome custom of the world. The only birthday that matters is that when a man reaches the age to sign the Covenant of Belief.”

“What age is that?” Isaac asked, not because he really cared, but just to keep words in the air. That seemed necessary at times or at least better than the heavy silence that often settled over them in between Brother Verne’s instructions.

“Twenty-one.”

“So you were raised here like Brother Asa?” Isaac asked.

“Nay. I was not so blessed to escape the sin of the world at such an early age as our Brother Asa. I came into the village with the need to cleanse my life of the sin of matrimony.”

“You’re married?” Isaac couldn’t keep the surprise out of his voice. “I didn’t think you could be married here.”

“You don’t listen well, Brother Isaac.” Brother Verne looked at him like a weary teacher might a recalcitrant student. “I cleansed my life of that sin when I came into the village and began to walk the Shaker way. My wife of the world and I lived as brother and sister among the other Believers.”

“So which sister is she?” Isaac didn’t know why he asked. He knew only a few of the sisters’ names. The Sister Mae who had brought food to him and Brother Asa on that first night. The ancient Sister Lettie who had treated the wound on his hand with such efficient care.

A few other women’s names had been spoken in his hearing, but there were many sisters. Nameless faces downturned and shadowed by their caps as they passed him on the pathways or while eating their meals on the opposite side of the silent dining room. He had a better look at their faces as they practiced their marching dances in the upper room of the Gathering Family House, but even there the men and women shared no words other than the words of the songs as they wound in and out in the dances without ever touching. He’d not yet even seen his own sister, Marian, but such a meeting was being arranged for the next night when the Shakers shared what they called Union night. On those nights Brother Verne had told him brothers and sisters were allowed to meet in small groups to discuss the work of the day.

So Isaac wasn’t really bothered when Brother Verne ignored his question. The two were walking to the men’s bathhouse to wash off the dirt of the field before the evening meal. While they needed the good dirt to grow their crops, the Shakers didn’t believe in carrying any of it into their houses. Everything in the village was brushed and swept as the sisters waged an ongoing war with dirt of every description. They had even practiced a sweeping dance the night before, as they attacked the dirt that might seep into one’s heart and soul with pretend brooms.

It wasn’t until they were leaving the bathhouse and Isaac had almost forgotten the question that Brother Verne answered. “That sister is no longer here in the village. She turned back to the sinful ways of the world.” The man’s voice was low, almost as if he were talking to himself instead of Isaac.

“She left?”

“Yea. Each person must choose for himself or herself the proper road. She chose the slippery slope to sinful destruction. Not a slope I want to find my feet on ever again.”

“Didn’t you love her?”

“Such worldly love is the cause of much sin. Our Eternal Father revealed to Mother Ann that we must relinquish all such ties and seek a life of grace and forgiveness.”

“But . . .” Isaac started and then stopped. He couldn’t imagine deserting his wife to live among these people, but then Ella’s face with tears streaking down her cheeks as they rode away from Louisville came to his mind. In the end he had deserted her needs for far less.

Brother Verne peered over at him. “A man’s soul is not a trifle to be thrown away for the lusts of the world. Each man must pick up his cross and carry it. Such is the Believer’s path away from sin to purity.”

For just a second Isaac imagined doubt in the man’s eyes, but then the staunch Believer returned. So Isaac bent his head and stared down at his feet as he said the Shaker yea in agreement. For whatever time he was there, he could stop speaking without thought and answer yea to the teachings Brother Verne wanted to force into his head. That was little enough to pay for the food they were giving him and a place to hide away from the judge’s eyes. A coward’s way perhaps, but then hadn’t Brother Asa claimed the gift of cowardice for him?

10

Lacey didn’t think things could get any stranger at the Ebenezer preacher’s house after the regretful marrying words, midnight attic visit, and breakfast eggs splattered all over the kitchen wall. But that was before the Shaker men showed up with their seeds and stayed with their preaching talk. They came back every day of the week to sit out on the porch with the preacher and go on and on about dancing worship and men and women being brothers and sisters. More than once Lacey wanted to ask them when they aimed to sell the seeds they’d been so anxious to find buyers for when they showed up on that first day.

It was always the one called Brother Forrest, but sometimes the young brother wasn’t with him. So maybe he was out selling seeds and tending to their proper business. The preacher didn’t buy any seeds from them even though Lacey had asked him to see if they had butterbean seeds. She was particularly fond of the plump, half-moon beans and how a bowl of the beans were filling enough to be all she needed to cook for supper.

Truth was, she was ready to plant anything just so she and Rachel could be out in the sunshine digging in the dirt instead of stuck in the house. She was worn out with overhearing the preacher and his new Shaker friends go back and forth about what this one believed or that one believed on how to set a body’s feet on the path to salvation.

Miss Mona could have told them. She could have quoted them Scripture and had them all understanding the way things should be. Especially for Lacey. Lacey hungered for Miss Mona’s sensible words in her ears, pointing to this or that Bible passage to help Lacey figure out what she needed to do next. Hiding from the truth of her situation didn’t seem to be working, but she kept doing it anyway. The garden was a good place to hide.

On the third afternoon that the Shaker men came to the porch, Lacey carried them water and then took Rachel out the back door over to the graveyard behind the church. There they dug up the ground beside Miss Mona’s gravestone to plant some iris bulbs. Purple and white. Miss Mona’s favorites. They put them to the side of the stone so the flowers wouldn’t cover up the name Reuben Harrison had chiseled in the stone.

Reuben was the nicest man at Ebenezer Church. He never looked crossways at Lacey when he smiled and said, “Good morning, Miss Lacey.” The words came off his tongue without the first tinge of condemnation. Sadie Rose would probably say that was because the poor man didn’t have enough sense to know right from wrong.

The good man was a little slow in his thinking, but he was at the church every time the doors were open and first to stand up to volunteer for any work that needed to be done at the church or the preacher’s house. He was the one who had brought his mule to turn over the sod for Lacey’s garden last fall. He was the one who dug out the first shovel of dirt for every grave in the church graveyard. He was the one who spent long hours carefully chiseling the names in the stone markers for those graves.

Lacey ran her hands across the letters of Miss Mona’s name. The stone was warm from the midday sun.

Rachel abandoned the earthworm she’d been letting crawl across her hand and came to lean against Lacey’s leg. “Is that Mama’s name?”

“Mona Wilson Palmer.” Lacey took Rachel’s hand in hers and helped her trace out the letters on the stone with her finger. “She loved us.”

Rachel stared at the stone. “Tell me about how you found me on the back porch.” The little girl looked up at Lacey. “The way Mama used to tell me.”

“You mean the true story and not a made-up Maddie kind of story?”

“The true story. I was in a box on the porch and I wasn’t crying. Angels were watching over me.” Rachel started the story she’d heard so often. Miss Mona’s words ran through Lacey’s mind as familiar as a nursery rhyme.

“That’s right.” Lacey kept one hand on the stone and the other flat against Rachel’s back. But instead of telling the story the way Miss Mona used to, with angel wing embellishments here and there, Lacey told the story as true as she could remember it. “At least you weren’t crying right at first. You were all wrapped up in a soft quilt and sucking on your two middle fingers when I went out the door to go draw water from the well. It was early in the morning, and the sun was just peeking up over those trees in behind the house. It was the tenth day of September, and one of those special days with the air so clear and bright that a body just knows something good is going to happen.”

“Did you know I was coming?”

“No, but later when I thought back on it, I remembered feeling the day was special as soon as I opened my eyes that morning. I was humming when I came down the steps to help Miss Mona get dressed. I didn’t always feel that way in the morning. Sometimes I wanted to just bury my head under my pillow and sleep a little longer, but that morning it was like the Lord pushed me out on my feet and told me to get with it. That this was a day I didn’t want to miss.”

“And then what happened?” Rachel looked up at Lacey, her blue eyes eager for this new telling of her story.

“Well, when I got downstairs, there was Miss Mona sitting up in her bed reading her Bible. She looked up at me and said, ‘This is the day the Lord hath made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.’”

“That was out of the Bible, wasn’t it?”

“It was. But then Miss Mona told me to get ready for something good to happen.”

“Where was Papa?” Rachel asked.

A little shadow drifted over the fun of telling the story, as Lacey didn’t want to think about the preacher that day or this day either. But she kept smiling as she said, “He must have been still asleep, because he didn’t know about how me and Miss Mona were feeling all crawly with joy even though we didn’t know why yet.”

“So then what happened? Did you go to the well?”

“I started to the well, but I didn’t get there. When I opened up the back door, there you were. A gift from heaven.”

“Did I fall out of the sky?” Rachel looked up at Lacey as if she wasn’t sure of the answer, even though she asked that very same thing with every telling of the story.

“Oh no. Babies don’t fall out of the sky.” Lacey didn’t stray from Miss Mona’s answer but used her exact same words.

“Then how did I get there?”

Miss Mona had always slipped past that question by talking about the angels watching over Rachel, but Lacey didn’t do that. She looked straight into Rachel’s eyes as she said, “Somebody who loved you very much put you there. Somebody who knew Miss Mona and me would love you just as much.”

“Did you love me right away?”

“We did. Even before I unwrapped the quilt from around you to count your toes.” Lacey leaned down and tickled Rachel’s bare toes. “They were a lot littler then.”

Rachel giggled and pulled her foot back. But then her smile faded.

“What’s the matter, honey?” Lacey asked her.

“I wish I knew who put me there.” Rachel dug her toes down in the newly turned dirt. “Jimmy says angels couldn’t have done it. That it had to be my real mother. The one I was born to. He says everybody has a born-to mother. That even Jesus had a mother he was born to.”

“Well, Jimmy’s got that right, but sometimes for reasons we can’t always know, the Lord gives a baby to somebody else. And then you’re born to their heart the way you were to me and Miss Mona.” Lacey wrapped Rachel’s hand in hers and put it over her heart.

“That’s a real purty thought, Miss Lacey.”

Lacey jumped a little when the man spoke. She looked over her shoulder to see Reuben leaning against a gravestone closer to the church. They had been so intent on their story that they hadn’t noticed him coming into the graveyard.

“Mr. Reuben,” Rachel yelled. Her smile came back as she ran toward him. He had a stick of candy pulled out of his pocket for her before she got there.

Lacey straightened up and smiled at him too. He had his rake and shovel.

Her smile faded. “Nobody’s passed on, have they?”

“Oh no, miss. I just come to make sure none of the stones had sunk during the winter freezes. We wouldn’t want Miss Mona’s stone to get crooked.”

He followed Rachel back over to the grave. He set each foot down solid and careful as though he planned out where he was going to land each step. He wasn’t very tall, but built solid like a tree trunk. Lacey had no idea how old he was. He seemed ageless. A man-sized boy with a generous heart, who was as much a part of the Ebenezer church as any deacon there.

He studied the ground beside the stone for a moment before he said, “If you’d a told me you needed to do some digging, I’d a done it for you.”

“We only dug a little to plant some flowers.”

“She’ll like that,” he said. “Miss Mona liked purty things. She’d a liked that story you told about finding Miss Rachel. I remember that morning.”

“You do?” Lacey was surprised. He’d never told her that before.

“I saw her on the porch.” His words came out slow. Reuben never talked in a hurry.

Lacey looked for Rachel to see if she was paying attention to what Reuben was saying, but she had run over to the church steps. She wasn’t taking any chances Lacey would tell her she couldn’t eat her candy until after supper. Lacey looked back at Reuben’s round face. “The baby you mean.”

“I saw the box. I didn’t have no way of knowing a baby was in it. I figured it was potatoes or maybe beans for Miss Mona and the preacher. It was her I saw.”

“Her?” Lacey suddenly felt very still inside. How come she had never heard about this before?

“The one who brung the box.”

“Did you know her?” Her heart thumped up in Lacey’s ears as she waited for his answer. Rachel’s words echoed in her mind.
Everybody has a born-to mother.

He shook his head once. “Weren’t nobody from church. But I’d seen her talking to the preacher before. Folks come talk to him, you know. When they’ve got troubles.”

“They do,” Lacey said. “How did you know she had troubles?”

“She was crying some that day when the preacher was talking to her out behind the church house. I didn’t hear nothing she said, because I turned around and went on back home. It ain’t right to bother the preacher when he’s helping somebody with their troubles. My mam always made sure I knew that.”

“Did you tell Preacher Palmer you saw her put the baby on the porch? After you knew it was a baby and not potatoes.”

“Miss Mona told me not to.”

“Miss Mona?” Lacey wasn’t sure she’d heard right.

“She said I shouldn’t tell nobody. Not the preacher. Nobody. That whoever the girl was had enough trouble heaped on her without us adding more.”

“Did she know who she was?”

“She never said no name.” Reuben looked down at his feet and then poked the ground with his shovel. “Guess as how I shouldn’t a ought to told you, but somehow it seemed like she was pushing me to tell you.”

“Who? Miss Mona?” Lacey frowned a little.

“Now don’t go being upset with me, Miss Lacey. I ain’t thinking on Miss Mona being a ghost or nothing, but sometimes it’s like she’s still talking to me in my head. Like she knows I got to talk to somebody. I could always trust Miss Mona whenever I needed help with anything. Like writing out the names for the stones. She always did that for me, but then you had to write out her name. I figure she would want me to be trusting you now.”

Reuben couldn’t read. He painstakingly copied out the lines of the names on the tombstones he chiseled without knowing which letters made which sounds.

“I could teach you your letters, Reuben.”

“Miss Mona tried once. Before you came to live with her. I couldn’t keep those markings in my head no matter how I looked at them. But I know my numbers. I can count to a hundred.” He smiled up at her. “You want to hear me?”

“Not right now, Reuben,” Lacey said and then felt guilty when Reuben looked disappointed. “How about just to twenty-five?”

His face lit up again as he started counting. “One, two, three . . .”

She kept her smile on her face as he said the numbers slowly and carefully, but in her head it was his words about seeing the woman put the box on the porch that she was hearing. And Miss Mona had known. Miss Mona had told him to keep it a secret.

Her candy gone, Rachel came back to stand between Lacey and Reuben as he counted. The little girl threw in a number with him sometimes when he paused, but if it wasn’t the right number, he’d shake his head and keep steadily on. He wasn’t a person to be thrown off track. A butterfly floated by to distract Rachel from the man’s number recitation, and she took off chasing it. At last Reuben said twenty-five.

“That was nice, Reuben. Thank you.”

He smiled sheepishly at her praise. “Wasn’t nothing to it. I like counting. I count most everything. There’s sixty-four graves here, you know, and twenty-three hymnbooks in the church. There used to be twenty-four, but somebody must’ve took one home and forgot to bring it back. We had forty-six people at church Sunday counting the preacher.”

When Reuben paused to consider his next count, Lacey jumped in with a question. “Have you ever seen her again?”

He looked puzzled by her question. “Seen who?”

“The woman you saw bring the box to our porch.”