The Believer (7 page)

"You could be right, my young brother." Brother Issachar pushed up off the log. Then before he began wielding his axe again, he turned to stare intently at Ethan as if searching his soul. "But what is one year in the whole of a man's life? You need to be sure of your decision for a man is honor-bound by the promises he makes"

And so Ethan had waited the year. He had withstood the questions and concerns of the elders and eldresses. He had exercised the dances and sung the songs and read more of Mother Ann's wisdom. He had shaken off the lustful drawing of the world without problem and put his hands to work for the good of the community. He had given himself the time Brother Issachar thought he needed, and the months had passed. He felt no different this October than last. He had been ready to sign his promise to be a Believer then. He was just as ready now.

The elders and eldresses of the Ministry gathered with Ethan after the morning meal for the signing of the Covenant. He read through the document even though he already knew what it said before he signed his name, promising to live a life of purity, to stay celibate, to give his hands to work and his heart to God.

Afterward, Brother Martin clapped him on the shoulder with a big smile spread across his broad face. "You will not regret your decision, Brother Ethan"

Brother Issachar was there as well, and he shook Ethan's hand and spoke no words of concern. But now Ethan thought the doubt was in Brother Issachar's eyes instead of Ethan's. As if Ethan would have to prove his belief. But hadn't it been Brother Issachar's words throughout the years since he had found him on the riverbank that had pushed Ethan along this path? The words that Ethan would be the best gift the river had ever yielded up to the Shakers. He wanted to be that gift. A true Believer.

It was Sunday and the bell rang to signal time for meeting. Out on the paths to the frame meetinghouse, voices began to join together in the Gathering Song. Brother Issachar left the room to join them, but Brother Martin held Ethan back for a moment.

"Don't be concerned with Brother Issachar's reticence. He has a tendency to be too much of an independent thinker for a true Believer. A gift to our Society for sure, with his way with wood and his ability to go out and trade with the world, but sometimes he needs to study the Millennial Laws a bit more devotedly. As you have already, Brother Ethan. You are a gift to us here at Harmony Hill. Of that, there is no doubt"

In meeting, Ethan took part in the back-and-forth steps of the worship dances passing in lines between his brothers and sisters without having to note once the pegs in the floorboards that helped them to make the right steps. Brother Samuel was gifted with a song and Sister Adele had a whirling gift. Elder Joseph said the spirit was strong in the meeting that day.

Ethan waited for some special manifestation in his own spirit of the step he'd taken, but meeting felt no different this week than it had last week. He told himself that was because he had been a Believer as much the week before as he was this week. He had already made the Covenant promise in his heart. Years ago.

Ethan had never been visited with any special manifestation of the spirit. No whirling. No shaking. No visions or songs. Brother Martin assured him that was not something he should regard with concern. He said each Believer was gifted in different ways, but no gift was more valuable than the next. Mother Ann had treasured the gift to be simple over any other gift, and that was a gift they could all receive as Believers if they humbled themselves and worked for the good of their society.

Ethan was ready to do that. He felt his connection with each brother and sister as they passed one another in the lines of the dance. And best of all, now that he was a full member of the Society, then perhaps the Ministry would allow him to go with Brother Issachar and the other brothers out into the world on the trading trips.

Ever since Ethan was a child, he had enjoyed meeting Brother Issachar when he came back into the village after a trading trip. Sometimes Brother Issachar and the other brothers rode a boat down the river all the way to New Orleans and then walked back after they sold the goods they had. Sometimes they simply took a wagon of goods or seeds into the nearby towns to sell. But whether the trip was long or short, when Brother Issachar came back into the village, he always carried with him some of the air of the world. Air that Ethan breathed in as he wondered about life beyond the village confines. Being curious about that world did not mean that one could not be a true Believer, Ethan told himself, even if part of the Covenant spoke of dividing one's self from the world.

As they stopped their dance to rest a moment, Ethan looked toward where Brother Issachar sat on a bench on the far side of the room. He was not a gifted dancer and sometimes sat out the sets in order not to disturb the order of the dances. Brother Issachar met his eyes. His look on Ethan was kind as always, but his smile seemed tinged with a knowing sadness as if his mind had reached across the room and read the thought in Ethan's head about the trading trips into the world. As if he could see beyond even those thoughts to some deeper fault in Ethan's soul that would cause the Covenant promises he'd made to become a burden.

Ethan shook that thought away. Surely he was reading Brother Issachar's face wrong. It was a time to celebrate when one signed the Covenant of Belief. Not a time to be looking back with doubt. A Believer shook away all doubts. A Believer labored the dances and sang the songs to be simple until his path was clear before him. Ethan had done that. He had no doubts. He was a Believer.

As the meeting broke up, he told himself not to let his mind run after wrong thoughts. Our thoughts are character molds. They shape language and action. Brother Martin had taught him that from Mother Ann's teachings years ago. Now he simply had to have right thoughts. A Believer's thoughts.

The morning after they buried their father, Elizabeth waited until Payton milked the cow and Hannah fed Aristotle the leftover milk gravy and biscuits from their breakfast. There was no meat and only a crust or two of bread left. She looked at the crock of sourdough starter that her mother had brought with her from Springfield, but Elizabeth had no time to bake more bread. They had some apples left from the tree in back of the cabin, and she had found a few coins in her father's secret hiding places. Perhaps enough to buy food on the way to the Shaker village.

She sent Hannah back out to the woods to gather more flowers for their father's grave before she made Payton sit down and listen to what had to be done.

"I'm not going" Payton stared across the table at her as if she had lost her mind. "We are not going to the Shakers"

Elizabeth smoothed down the seed package she'd left in the middle of the table and leveled her eyes on Payton. "We have no other choice. The Shakers will take us in. They'll give us shelter and food"

"I can catch fish. We won't starve'

"Winter is coming, Payton. The river doesn't yield up its fish all that easily in the cold months. You know that:"

"We have the cow."

"The cow also needs food in the winter. Fodder we do not have. Fodder Father would have found for her someway, but now we have to find it and I know not how."

"Colton would help us;' Payton said.

"That is my fear;" Elizabeth said softly.

Payton's face changed as if he was remembering the scene he'd witnessed the day before. "Is he so bad?" he asked at last with a trace of hope in his voice.

"If he were the only way to keep you and Hannah from starving this winter, I would give myself to him even though his very eyes on me make my skin crawl. I'd rather bed with a snake" Elizabeth couldn't stop the shudder that shook her, but then she sat up straighter in her chair and stared at Payton. "But he is not the only way. The Shakers are our way. It's not so far to their village. Maybe two or three days' walk'

"I won't go' Payton mashed his mouth together in a determined line.

"Please, Payton" Elizabeth reached across the table to touch his arm. "It's our only way of staying together. You and me and Hannah. We don't have to stay with the Shakers forever. Just for a few months until we figure out something better. It is what Father would have wanted"

"How do you know?" Payton asked.

"I prayed for an answer and the Lord gave me this seed packet" Elizabeth held it up. "Father told us about the Shakers. He said theirs is a beautiful village with plentiful food and large houses"

"He said they make everyone work:"

"You're not afraid of work. Nor am I"

"What about Hannah?" Payton asked. "Will they understand her spirit?"

Elizabeth sighed deeply. He spoke the worry that had troubled her all the morning. "I don't know, but perhaps it is time she began to rein in her spirit. She needs to go to school. Father said so himself last spring, and he said the Shakers had a school. A good school. And whatever it is will surely be better than her being carried off to an orphanage where we might never see her again. I couldn't bear that. I would go to Colton first"

Payton's face flooded with anger. "Colton is the cause of this. If not for him, we could stay here. We could make our way.

"It is his cabin. His land:" Elizabeth pushed the truth at Payton.

His anger settled deeper in his face and changed to lines of sadness as he accepted that truth. "I'll miss the river;" he said at last. "When will we leave?"

"As soon as we can be ready. Colton promised me two days, but I don't trust him to stand by his word"

"What can we take?"

"Only what we can carry." Elizabeth had already been grieving over each thing she touched that morning-her mother's rolling pin, the wooden biscuit board carved by Payton, the books on her father's shelves-knowing she would have to leave all of them behind.

"What about the cow?"

"We will loose her in the woods and leave her to pay Colton although I have no idea of the amount he claims is owed him. I searched, but I could find no record of debt in Father's papers:' A spark of hope sneaked back onto Payton's face, but Elizabeth blocked it before it could bloom into words. "Even if there is no proof of debt to him, we can't continue to live in his cabin. Not without paying more than I am prepared to pay."

Hannah opened the door and came inside with Aristotle. Her hair was a wild halo of white curls around her dirtsmudged face. The worry grew in Elizabeth that the Shakers would not understand Hannah's spirit. Who could understand the wildness in the child? Not even their father had understood it. He had simply accepted it, as had Elizabeth.

"What of Aristotle?" Payton looked at the dog. "Father said the Shakers didn't have pets. You remember, don't you? How he said it was odd to be in such a large village with no sound of a dog barking"

Aristotle ran over to Elizabeth and pressed his nose against her leg. Why did everything have to be so hard? Why couldn't Colton have been a man she could bear to touch her? She didn't have to love him. Just be able to bear his presence next to her. She stroked the dog's head and blinked back the tears that threatened to spill out and leak her strength with them. She could sacrifice herself to Colton for Payton and Hannah if there was no other way. She could not sacrifice herself for a dog.

"The Lord will help us find him a home on the way."

When Elizabeth told Hannah her plan, Hannah stomped her feet down hard as if attaching them to the floor and crossed her arms over her chest. "I will not leave my mother and father."

Elizabeth stooped down until she was looking Hannah straight in the eye. "Our mother and father are not here. They are in heaven"

"They are more here than anywhere else we can go:"

"No, my Hannah, you have it wrong. They are with us wherever we go. Here in our hearts" She put one hand softly over Hannah's heart and the other hand over her own heart. "We've told their bodies goodbye, but their love is right here inside us forevermore"

Hannah stared at her for a moment while the blue of her eyes seemed to darken with understanding. Then she put her hands over top of Elizabeth's hands. "Your love too?"

"My love too"

"Will I have to comb my hair?"

"Not today, but you must take your comb, for you will have to comb it before we get to the Shaker village. Perhaps we should cut some of it off to make the job easier"

"I care not. It is only hair."

"But what hair!" Elizabeth laughed and hugged her. "Father said the Shakers brought order to all things. We'll see what they can do with your hair"

"Father liked my hair" Hannah pulled back to stare into Elizabeth's face.

"And so did Mother." Elizabeth raked her fingers through Hannah's curls. "She brushed it for you every night before you went to bed and every morning when you got up. She said it was like cotton flax"

"I remember."

"Do you? You were so young:'

"I remember," Hannah said again. "Sometimes she comes still to brush my hair in my dreams"

The sun was high in the sky before they had their packs assembled. The first time they tried to choose what to take with them, they gathered far more than they could carry. In the end Elizabeth left everything behind except her father's Bible and her mother's Sunday handkerchiefs. With her nose buried in the lacy fabric of the handkerchiefs, she imagined she could even yet breathe in a hint of her mother's perfume. The rest of her pack she filled with what food they had, a skillet, her mother's scissors, and the tinderbox.