The Gifted (10 page)

“Excuses are of the devil,” Sister Edna said. “And the devil has no welcome in our rose gardens. It would be best if Sister Abigail goes to pick roses with Sister Annie for the remainder of our duty here.”

“Yea,” Sister Jessamine said meekly with hopes that Sister Abigail would also lower her head and respond with meekness.

“Yea, Sister Edna, if you think that best,” Sister Abigail said. “But we were only speaking of the good benefits of sunshine. That is surely what brings the abundant blooms here, is it not? And it can also cause the blooming of love in our hearts.” The girl smiled winsomely at the older woman and went on quickly. “Sisterly love, of course.”

Sister Edna’s eyes narrowed on Sister Abigail as she seemed to be searching for fault in the girl’s words. At last she said, “A glib tongue is not the best tongue. Silence is much to be desired, Sister Abigail, and a gift you should prayerfully seek.” She turned her eyes on Jessamine. “And you too, Sister Jessamine. It is a danger to one’s soul to lead a young sister astray.”

“To do so would bring me sorrow,” Jessamine said. “I will mend my ways and pray for more wisdom in my conduct.”

Sister Edna’s face didn’t soften even though she spoke words of acceptance. “Very well, sisters. Let us continue our duty with no more lagging.”

She put her hand under Sister Abigail’s elbow to propel her up the row to where Sister Annie continued to strip the rose blooms with the energy driven by anger. It promised to be a long day for both Sister Annie and Sister Abigail.

But Sister Abigail’s spirit wasn’t bothered. She waited until Sister Edna looked away to flash Jessamine a smile over her shoulder and whisper, “Love the sunlight.”

“What are you whispering about, Sister Abigail?” Sister Edna gripped the girl’s arm harder and gave her a jerk forward.

“Just being thankful for the warming gift of the sun. And wanting to share that gift with my sisters,” Sister Abigail said with an innocent smile. “Is it not proper to share gifts with our sisters?”

“Not gifts of mischief. I don’t know why Eldress Frieda ever thought the two of you could work together. I will be informing her of your slack work here in the gardens.”

“Will I be denied the evening meal?” Sister Abigail asked as she moved up the row toward Sister Annie. “Like a naughty child?”

“Nay. You know little of our Shaker way,” Sister Edna said. “Wrong actions and thoughts bring their own punishment and steal the peace that can be yours. We deny no one the food necessary for health.”

Jessamine sighed as she watched them move away. She did not intend to be forever in trouble. She rose each morning with the intent to walk the Shaker path with obedience, but something was continually tripping her up.

As she began clipping off the roses and stripping the petals, she tried to think only of the silky feel of them on her fingertips, but that brought to mind Sister Abigail’s words about kissing. And that brought to mind the man from the woods. She did have the desire to see him again before he left the village, but she knew Sister Sophrena would never allow that. But what if she did happen to walk past Brother Benjamin’s medicinal garden? With the sun rising in the east. Or perhaps sinking in the west. The doctor’s garden received sunlight morning and evening.

Journal Entry

Harmony Hill Village

Entered on this 15th day of June in the year 1849

by Sister Sophrena Prescott

Sister Edna reports a lack of dutiful mindfulness to their task of picking rose petals by Sister Jessamine and Sister Abigail. Sister Edna is gifted with an observant eye when it comes to seeing lapses and faults. Such gifts are sometimes a help in maintaining proper discipline in our village, but I must say I am glad I do not share that gift. Even listening to our sister relate the wrongs she sees makes me weary. I often find it hard to sit silent as the list goes on and on. Small sins, but as Sister Edna insists and correctly so, sins nevertheless.

I do have to admit to feeling a heavy sigh build up in me as she continued on about Sister Jessamine’s improper attitude. Sister Jessamine seemed so ready to work to recover the proper peace of a Believer, but wrong thoughts tempted her yet again. She is so young. Even younger inwardly than outwardly, I believe. Her mind is much too easily entranced by fanciful ideas. She confessed that her worldly desire to see parasols was the reason she led Sister Annie on that wild-goose chase through the woods—a caper ending with the two of them perilously close to danger. Parasols of all things. It quite makes my head ache. I despair of ever teaching the girl proper discipline unless she can rein in her curiosity about such trivial things.

Perhaps it would be wise to move Sister Abigail to a different retiring room. Sister Edna reports the two have been heard whispering during the time for sleep. I do have to agree with Sister Edna in regard to that young sister. Sister Abigail has little desire to be among us. Her natural father forced his family to come among us. Such sisters—those compelled to come into the village rather than coming of their own free will—have much more of a struggle believing in the truth of the Shaker way. I have spoken to Sister Abigail many times, encouraging her to confess her sins, to seek the truth, to pick up her cross and live a life of belief and duty. She smiles. She speaks words of confession empty of meaning.

That doesn’t mean she won’t change. Many do. I think of myself when I came to the village. I too carried doubts and worries and the desire to look over my shoulder back toward the world. But I found love here. Such feelings as I had never experienced either at my childhood home or in my sinful marital union. Those same feelings of love are available in abundance to Sister Abigail and have been known by Sister Jessamine for nigh on ten years here among us.

But I fear our Sister Jessamine is experiencing some new feelings not as pleasant or to be desired as the feeling of love between our sisters. Feelings brought on by her encounter with the man of the world.

I cannot keep from hoping he will soon recover his senses and be on his way and take his worldly temptation with him. I have to confess a sinful hope that Sister Lettie is wrong when she says he is showing interest in our way of life here and may linger among us to explore the Believer’s way. It is wrong of me to harbor the desire to deny him that blessing, but I do worry about Sister Jessamine.

That is certainly nothing new.

I should leave my worries behind and sweep them out of my mind. The devil puts such concerns in our thoughts to spoil our peace. It would behoove me to consider my proper duty as a journal keeper. I err by dwelling on such worries instead of reporting our progress here in our village. I must marshal my thoughts in proper directions.

We are harvesting an abundance of rose petals. There will be much rosewater to sell to the world. The brethren planted a late crop of corn and our East Family sisters have begun to pick the first bearing of green beans for our tables. The peaches are swelling on the trees. Thankfully, the late frost did not do the damage we feared. The cherry trees are heavy with fruit. The pickers will go out today to harvest the sweet fruit before the birds can steal them. My mouth waters at the thought of the pies we will enjoy from our trees.

Sunday we will go forth to labor our worship songs. We are allowing people of the world to come to our Sunday morning meetings again. I wonder if it might not have been wiser to continue to bar them from our services. Most only come to ridicule our ways. In my time here at the village—going on fourteen years now—I have only known of three to convert to our ways from witnessing our worship times. But then Eldress Frieda would remind me to offer praises for those three.

Would that I have reason to offer praise for the injured stranger. May he set his feet upon the way to salvation among us. Meanwhile I shall endeavor to keep Sister Jessamine busy with so many tasks she will have no time to wonder about the world.

7

Tristan didn’t know why he said Philip. The name just flew out of his mouth when the Shaker doctor asked if his memory had returned. He knew a Philip in the army. Philip Jeffries. A slight young man with no chance at all of fighting off the fever. He died right next to Tristan without making a whimper of protest. Tristan hadn’t even realized Philip was dead until they carried his body away.

It didn’t seem right to die so quietly before one even reached the age of twenty-five. Better to go out fighting. To die on the battlefield dispatched in a moment of glory, although Tristan hadn’t witnessed many of those. He’d seen plenty of dying, but little glory. His father told him the battlefield charges would seem more glorious after a few years dulled the memory of the blood and fear. Tristan supposed enough years hadn’t passed for him as yet. He doubted they ever would. He remembered sand and the burning sun and the tormenting flies along with the boom of artillery fire and the stench of spilled blood and putrid flesh.

While Tristan willingly volunteered to fight the Mexicans, he wasn’t a soldier. His father was the soldier in the family, ready to jump into the fray at the first clash of sabers. Tristan joined the Georgia militia in an attempt to offer up the Cooper blood so his father could stay home. But the old soldier refused to pass up the chance to fight for his country and had paid for it with his life. Not killed in any of those glorious charges on artillery positions but by an insidious disease he’d carried home to Georgia.

Tristan’s father had not been well enough to begin the final assault on Mexico City. Instead of boarding the ships for the embarkation, he’d been discharged and sent home. The fever caught up with Tristan before the army reached Mexico City. Whether it was the one that afflicted his father or that caused Philip Jeffries to stop breathing hardly mattered. Fever in a sick camp was fever. The Grim Reaper cared not what label man put on death. So when they carried away the body of young Philip Jeffries, Tristan had every reason to expect he might soon join the man in the mass graves outside the camp. But he determined his would not be a silent surrender of his last breath. He’d go out warring against the devil himself if need be.

That’s what these strange people called Shakers claimed to do. War against the devil in search of a perfect life. One devoid of sin of any kind. Toward that end they kept the men and women strictly separated. Even to having two front doors in every building that might be entered by both men and women. One door for the sisters and one for the brethren. Sister Lettie assured him it was a good way. One that kept sin from their thresholds.

He had doubts sin was so easy to bar from their houses. Every preacher he’d ever known had expounded at length about the sinfulness of man. Not that Tristan had worried that much about his sinful nature in the last few years. He’d left church behind even before the war. Any remnants of faith he’d carried with him to Mexico were lost on the battlefields. Others beside him had called out to God. Vainly. The shells kept exploding. Men fell and bled out their lives on foreign soil just the same, whether they were faithful believers or the worst rabble-rouser. It mattered not. Nor did prayers keep the fever from felling those standing at the end of the battles. There was no mercy.

He didn’t tell all that to Brother Benjamin, although the man might have listened with patience. The doctor was a big man, thick through the chest and broad across the shoulders, but his hands had the gentleness of a woman as he treated Tristan’s wound.

“It is good that your memory is coming back.” The doctor paused in applying the ointment to Tristan’s head to study his face after he came out with the name. “Philip. Is that a surname or your given name?”