The Blessed (18 page)

Upstairs a door opened and closed and footsteps whispered along the upstairs hallways toward the stairs. No doubt one of the sisters making sure not a speck of dirt escaped her broom so the good spirits Mother Ann claimed could not live where there was dirt would not desert their buildings. Nor could good spirits live in a heart that was weighted down with sin and temptation. Or with guilt and grief.

“Well, what do you have to say for yourself, Brother Isaac?” Brother Verne finally asked.

“I carry my burden,” Isaac said. “Every day.”

“A burden of sin you do not wish to lay down. You cling to the worldly sins rather than pick up the cross of right living.”

“And what of you, Brother Verne? Is your cross growing too heavy?” Isaac knew he should stop there from the storm that was gathering on Brother Verne’s face, but he did not. The same as in the cornfield when he’d spoken the words of conflict to Brother Elwood, his mouth seemed to form the words on its own and let them out into the air. “Your eye is not blind. Or do you have a beam in it while you are trying to get the speck out of mine? Perhaps you do not have the proper brotherly feelings toward the new sister yourself.”

“Get thee from me, Satan.” Brother Verne pushed his hands out toward Isaac palm first. “Brother Elwood is right. You are allowing a wrong spirit to dwell in you.”

“Can you say my words are wrong?” Isaac stared at him. “Without the sin of falsehood you accused me of earlier?”

The tip of Brother Verne’s long nose turned as red as the skin stretched across his cheeks. “You have no right to accuse me of wrongdoing. You who cling to the world and cast lustful eyes on your sisters. You who spoil the harmony of our village. You who run after evil. You who . . .”

Isaac picked up the slop buckets and ignored the brother’s accusing words that were spilling around him every bit as repulsive as the contents of the slops. A noise in the upper hallway drew his eye as he turned away from Brother Verne. The new sister, Lacey, had paused in the middle of her sweeping motion at the top of the sisters’ stairway. Isaac expected her to be upset, even frightened by Brother Verne’s vehement outpouring of condemning words, but she didn’t seem bothered. Far from it. With a smile, she leaned the broom handle against her shoulder and put both hands over her ears. Isaac was so surprised that he felt an answering smile want to slip across his own face, but he held it back until he went out the door. Brother Verne’s words followed him, but so did the new sister’s smile. The smile won.

Elder Homer was waiting for Isaac when he carried the empty slops back into the house. Brother Verne was nowhere to be seen, but it was evident that he had reported Isaac’s impenitent spirit to the elder. Sister Lacey must have finished sweeping the stairs and taken her broom and smiles on to another task.

“Come, Brother Isaac,” the elder said as the bell signaling the morning meal rang. “We will talk as we walk. Or I will talk and you will listen.”

“Yea.” He stashed the empty slop pails under the stairs and followed the elder out the brethren’s door.

“You have disturbed Brother Verne’s inner calm, and we feel it is better for you to stay away from him and not bother him with your words for a few days. Perhaps longer.” The elder looked over at Isaac. He didn’t appear to be angry. A bit weary perhaps, but his eyes remained kind. He pulled on his beard. “It is best if we do not let accusing words upset our harmony. Silence is often a virtue.”

A virtue Isaac decided to practice. It would do little good to speak of Brother Verne’s angry words and accusations. He was a covenanted Believer. Isaac was a novitiate with no plan to join anything. He had no thought of achieving spiritual or physical purity. Not with what he’d done. His sole aim upon rising each morning from the Shaker bed was that of exchanging honest labor for meals and a bed. A meal it appeared he was going to miss this morn as they walked away from the eating room instead of toward it. So he kept his eyes on the ground in front of him and tried not to think of his empty stomach as he said, “Yea.”

The elder walked on a few steps in silence as well. The village was quiet with all the brothers and sisters inside their family houses eating their biscuits and applesauce and eggs. There would be no bacon or ham since the New Lebanon ministry council had forbidden the eating of pork a few years back. What they decreed, every Shaker village practiced.

“We are missing the morning meal,” the elder said as he turned back toward the Gathering Family House. “Not my intention, but a missed meal is better than a broken peace among our brothers. Do you not agree, Brother Isaac?”

Isaac could not truthfully say he preferred peace with Brother Verne over breakfast, and while it hadn’t bothered him to lie to Brother Verne, he didn’t want to do so to Elder Homer. So he sidestepped the question and asked one of his own. “What would you have me to do, Elder?”

“You avoid the question of peace, my brother.” The elder let out a small sigh as he ran his fingers through his beard again. “But perhaps in time you will be able to answer as you should. As for now, Brother Asa has spoken up for you. He has asked that you be allowed to work with him during this time of adjustment in your understanding of our ways. He came to me last week with this request.”

“Last week?” Isaac peered over at the elder. “Brother Verne only got angry with me this morning.”

“Yea, that is true, but Brother Asa had a dream of you that troubled him. He feels responsible for you in many ways since he brought you into our society. And responsible to the society.”

“That sounds like you think I might do harm to someone here. I promise I have no thought to that.”

“So you say. And I believe your words come from your heart, Brother Isaac. At the same time we can wound others with careless actions or selfish thinking. Or thoughtless words.” The elder looked straight into Isaac’s face. “Such can be forgiven, but the wounds have still been inflicted.”

“Yea, you need not remind me of that truth.” Isaac closed his eyes and saw Ella’s face in death. A wound that would never heal, but it did him no good to dwell on it. He pushed thoughts of Ella away and concentrated on the elder’s words.

“Brother Asa is working in the barns with the animals. You will do well to listen to his instructions. We never fail to treat our dumb animals with kindness.” Elder Homer stopped on the walkway before going up the steps into the Gathering Family House. “I trust I will hear of no more disruptive words from you.”

“Nay, you will not.”

Isaac had no worry making that pledge if Brother Asa was going to be his Shaker guide. Perhaps his life as a novitiate was about to get better. The promise of being free of Brother Verne for a few days was enough to make up for missing the morning meal. As the elder turned away from him to climb the steps into the house, yet another smile crossed Isaac’s lips. And with it came the memory of the new sister’s smile that had taken the sting from Brother Verne’s words. Could it be she had the same contrary spirit that dwelt within Isaac?

18

Sister Aurelia saw angels. At least so she told Lacey. Actually she did more than see them. She talked to them. And danced with them. She claimed not to be the first bit afraid of these angelic creatures. That was what had Lacey wondering and doing some doubting. She thought back over all the Bible stories she and Miss Mona had read. All the ones she could remember about angels coming down to talk to people face to face, every last one the very first thing the angel told them was “Don’t be afraid. Fear not.”

And who wouldn’t feel her knees knocking together if a great shining angel, who might have just the minute before been getting his marching orders from the Almighty himself, was now standing right in front of her? Just thinking about it made chills chase up and down Lacey’s spine.

She’d imagined plenty of unusual happenings. Fairies and such. Plus those angels Miss Mona had told Rachel were scrambling around on the roof to get their attention the morning she was a baby in a basket out on the back porch step. Such made for good storytelling, but Lacey hadn’t believed angels were really out there tapping on the roof. And she hadn’t thought Miss Mona did either. Not the kind of angels a body could actually lay her eyes on and see.

Miss Mona was of the opinion angels were real, and Lacey wasn’t doubting that either. Anybody who believed the Bible spoke true words would have to believe that. But at the same time, angels didn’t just come down to say howdy. Even in Bible times. When angels started talking to people, they always had some sort of powerful message. Like telling Abraham and Sarah they were going to have a baby. Or Zechariah to name his boy John. Or Mary that she was going to have a baby even without knowing a man.

When Lacey thought about the Bible angels, it seemed like a heap of their pronouncements had to do with babies, and for sure, that wasn’t going to be the kind of news any of the Shakers were expecting to hear. Not so long as they stayed true to their Shaker vows. Virgin births weren’t all that common. One in an eternity, the way Lacey had it figured, and that one had already happened.

But Sister Aurelia had a different way of believing about angels. She thought they did come down just to say howdy or to whisper secret messages in her ear. And she wasn’t the only one. She said that angel visits fell on the Shakers like raindrops in the spring and that Lacey would witness the power of that once she got to go to meeting.

The first Sunday she was in the village, Sister Drayma had decided Lacey wasn’t spiritually ready to attend the meeting, but she had seen them practicing their steps and songs after the supper meal on several weekday nights. The songs they practiced weren’t a thing like the ones she’d sung back at the Ebenezer church, even though some of them were written down in books with the music notes. Only one note per word. Everybody was supposed to sing on that same note. For unity, Sister Drayma claimed. Some of the Shaker songs were a dozen verses. Others a mere chorus of a few lines, begging love from their Mother Ann sung over and over a dozen times.

No fiddles or Jew’s harps or pianos were on hand at the practices or in the meetinghouse when Lacey lined up with the rest of the Shakers to worship on her second Sunday in the village. Sister Drayma told her the music all came from the people. Even the marching and dancing music. The steps back and forth looked to be easy enough in the practice. The leaders put marks on the floor to help the dancers remember where to turn and start off another direction, and they managed not to bang into one another. Lacey figured that would be severely frowned on, seeing as how a man and a woman couldn’t even be on the same stairways or go in and out the same doors for fear of an errant touch. But could be the dancing was different.

A lot was different about the Shakers’ Sunday morning meeting, although the bell ringing to get the people out of their rooms and started toward the meetinghouse was some the same.

They walked in lines. Men and women separate the same as any day. Singing as they walked to the meetinghouse. That was different from the church, but Lacey liked the joyful sound of the Shakers’ voices. A “glad to be going to church” sound. Better than the solemn silence that fell over folks back at Ebenezer when they approached the church. Preacher Palmer had always set the somber mood with his grave greetings to the church members at the door. The Shaker Believers did fall silent as they came into their meetinghouse, but the ones outside kept on singing until the last one of them stepped through the doors.

Once inside, the women perched on benches on one end of the meetinghouse and the men on the other. Lacey searched through the Shaker men until her eyes landed on the preacher, dressed in like clothes to the rest of the men and looking odd without his black preaching suit and his Bible tucked in the crook of his arm. He shifted a little on the bench and looked as nervous as a fresh-shorn sheep pushed back out into the field with no wool. Shorn to look like all the other sheep with nothing about the field familiar.

The place didn’t even look like a church, with no pulpit or offering plate table or anything else that spoke church the way Lacey and the preacher knew it. No picture of Jesus. Not even a Bible. Just the big bare room with lines of benches on the wooden floor and those Shaker peg strips all around the walls with hats hanging on them. Things got even stranger when a woman stood right up in the middle of the floor and spoke about how strong the spirit had been the last few meetings and how they all needed to be ready for more of Mother’s work.

Lacey sneaked another look over toward the preacher. Brother Elwood. Sister Drayma had told her that was what she needed to call him now. It sat odd on Lacey’s tongue, but she didn’t have much need to speak his name here in this place. He was sitting straight with his hands on his knees just like the two men on each side of him. Fitting in. She supposed she ought to try to do the same, but she felt like a sharp-edged rock in a pile of round pebbles.

And the truth of the matter was, the preacher was looking like some of his sharp corners were showing too as he stared at the woman speaking right out in church. That wasn’t something that would likely be happening back at the Ebenezer church when they gathered to worship without their preacher on this Lord’s Day. The churchwomen would be doing plenty of talking out in the churchyard or in their sitting rooms or on their front porches, but in the church building it would be the men who spoke up.

The preacher didn’t look her way. Never looked over at the sisters’ side of the room at all. Kept his eyes right where he was supposed to—on the preaching sister. While Lacey watched, he slid one hand up off his knee and yanked on his collar like it was cutting off his air. Lacey almost felt sorry for him. Almost. Until she let her eyes wander to the side where the Shaker children were sitting. Rachel wasn’t among them. No children as young as her were there.

Lacey shifted uneasily on the bench. Her legs were itching to stand up and walk out of this building and search through the other houses until she found Rachel. And then maybe just grab her hand and walk on out of this village with all its against-nature rules and women preachers and angel visions.

They wouldn’t let her, of course. Somebody would step in front of her and try to push her back into the fold. She could fight them and probably outrun those nearest her, but what good would that do her? They’d just pitch her out of the village. Without Rachel. And then the little girl would be lost to her forever. Lacey wasn’t willing to risk that. She’d have to figure out a better way. One that wouldn’t get Sister Drayma’s or Eldress Frieda’s neckerchiefs all in a twist.

Sister Drayma sat on Lacey’s left and Sister Aurelia on her right. Sister Aurelia had been practically attached to Lacey’s side since that day in the garden when she’d stopped Lacey from chasing after Rachel. She was on every work detail with Lacey and had taken over Sister Drayma’s duty of showing Lacey how to properly perform the Shaker tasks. Lacey didn’t mind. Aurelia didn’t preach so much as Sister Drayma. She mostly talked about the angels who whispered in her ears and danced with her.

So far Lacey hadn’t heard the first echo of angel feet dancing, but the angel talk was easier on her ears than Sister Drayma’s constant harping on rules about what she couldn’t do and rules about how to do what was allowed. There had to be hundreds of rules. More than once Lacey had wanted to ask if the Shakers hadn’t ever read the part in the Bible where Jesus had reduced all the rules to two. “Love the Lord with all thy heart and love thy neighbor as thyself.” But there were times it was smarter to keep her mouth shut.

This appeared to be one of those times, as Lacey peeked over at Aurelia and then folded her hands in her lap to match. Conform, she told herself. Make them think she was following the rules and they might quit watching so closely. Then she could slip away and find Rachel to tell her those Maddie stories she’d promised her. In spite of the watchers Sister Drayma had made sure Lacey knew about early on. Shakers who stood at the upper windows or even on the roofs to watch the village pathways and shadows to make sure no wrongdoings were going on.

In fact even sitting there in the middle of their meetinghouse while the little Shaker preacher woman kept going on and on about the mighty works their Mother Ann had been sending down to them from heaven, Lacey felt somebody watching her. When she was a little girl, she used to imagine her mother peering down on her from heaven, and these last few months, she often felt some the same about Miss Mona. That she might be watching her with loving eyes. Wishing her the best. Reminding her to pray. And to love the Lord.

But here in the middle of a pile of Shaker sisters, she didn’t have that benevolent feeling. It was more like all the churchwomen back at Ebenezer watching her to be sure she acted like a proper preacher’s wife. It had been a good thing they couldn’t see behind closed doors. Or inside her heart. She hadn’t been any kind of proper preacher’s wife.

She let her eyes slide back over to the brothers’ side of the room, thinking maybe it was Preacher Palmer’s disapproving eye on her, but he was sitting straight as a fencepost with his eyes still fixed on the Shaker sister doing the talking. Other than fretting that her contrary spirit might cast a shadow on his quest for perfection, Lacey doubted he’d given her the first thought. Or Rachel either. He’d been more than ready to disavow them both, once those Shaker men had shown up peddling their seeds and their peculiar way to salvation.

She shifted her eyes a little to the side and right into the eyes of that Shaker brother who had told her not to come to the Shaker village. Brother Isaac. The one who had loved his wife so much that the thought of it made Lacey’s heart go soft. The one who strange Brother Verne had been browbeating on the steps the other morning.

She’d chanced Sister Drayma seeing her hold her ears and shoot a smile down at Isaac that morning and been rewarded with a lift of his shoulders and the beginnings of an answering smile. Now as if he had read her mind across the room, he moved his head slightly to the side and up as he motioned with his eyes. She followed the direction of his look. A small peephole opening toward the top of the wall above a closed doorway. Eyes peered out the hole straight at her.

Lacey looked down at her folded hands. She wanted to look back over at Isaac and smile, but didn’t dare with eyes watching her. And him. How could he have guessed what she was thinking? Or maybe he had just thought to warn her when he noted her wandering attention. She wished they could talk again. Be in one of those union meetings Sister Drayma said the Shakers sometimes allowed, where the sisters sat in a line across from the brothers and they talked of planting the crops and weaving baskets or whatever tasks their hands were engaged in that week. But they wouldn’t be able to talk about the odd Shaker rules about books. She wouldn’t be able to ask him about the wife he’d lost and how he’d ended up in this place. That was the kind of talking she wanted to do. She couldn’t care less how many cows were eating the grass in the back pasture or whether the strawberries were turning red.

The Shaker preaching sister’s voice got louder until her words were ringing off the walls. “Next Saturday is Feast Day when we will go to our holy Chosen Land to worship as the spirit leads. Prepare your hearts this day as you labor the dances so that we can be refreshed and ready for Mother’s sweet gifts on that day.” The little woman reached her hands toward the ceiling. “Let us labor now to bring down Mother’s love.”

The men and women stood at once and began moving the benches to the side. Clearing the floor. Sister Aurelia took hold of Lacey’s arm and pulled her over to the side benches. “You won’t be able to labor the regular exercises yet, Sister Lacey. You can watch from here and sing the songs in chorus if you know the words. Unless a whirling gift falls on you.”

“A whirling gift?” Lacey raised her eyebrows at Aurelia. She wasn’t thinking on doing any whirling.

“Or a shaking one. The spirits have been strong among us lately. They could take over your body the same as mine. The angels don’t only dance with me.”