The Blessed (31 page)

They repeated the same words over and over until Lacey felt like the song was plowing a deep furrow in her brain that she might never climb out of. Happy. Happy. As though singing the word could make it so.

Lacey had been instructed to keep her eyes straight ahead, but she sneaked looks toward the columns of men marching alongside the sisters. Preacher Palmer was there, his mouth spilling out the song, but even as he sang the happy words, his eyes were darting about as though on the lookout for something else. Something to climb perhaps. Not far behind him she spotted Isaac. Marching and singing like the rest. She wondered if he’d asked forgiveness for talking to her in the woods. If he had and Sister Drayma heard of it, Lacey would have some confessing and explaining to do. Saying Aurelia told her not to speak of it would be a lame excuse. Akin to Eve in the garden, blaming the serpent for her sin.

She didn’t see Aurelia, but Sister Lena told her the instruments of the angels would be leading the way, followed by the Covenant-signed Believers. Lacey was in the last group of marchers, those on the fringes of belief in the Shaker way. Or unbelief.

The song suddenly changed, flashing through the marchers like a grass fire.

To the Chosen Land we are going as our voices praises sound.

Our hearts unite in rejoicing as we enter this sacred ground.

Lacey stopped even pretending to sing. She shouldn’t be there pretending to believe something she didn’t. Pretending to see angels. Pretending she had no choice but to play along. And still her feet kept moving forward with the others. Those who did believe that angels had brought down dresses of gold and robes of purple to ready the Shakers for whatever was going to happen next. The singing trailed off as the Believers began to circle around a stone enclosed inside a low fence, the men on the east side and the women on the west. When the circle around the enclosure was complete, a new circle formed behind it.

Without any discernable signal that Lacey could note, a profound silence fell over the Shakers as every man and woman there became perfectly still. The air was so charged with anticipation that Lacey could almost see a glow hovering over the heads of the Shakers gathered closest to the rock. The fountain, or so Sister Lena had called it that morning as they had swept out the sleeping rooms.

“There’s a marble stone in the middle and out of it holy water flows so that those free from sin can wash themselves clean,” she’d said. “Of course, it’s spirit water that can only be made real by how much you believe.”

“And everybody does this?” Lacey asked.

“Oh nay. As I said, only those free from sin. There’s a warning from the angels written in the stone for any who might defile it by trying to wash in the fountain’s water while yet in sin.”

“I won’t be trying it for sure,” Lacey said.

“You couldn’t anyway. Not as a novitiate. But you can partake of the spiritual fruit and drink of Mother’s wine. And then maybe next Feast Day you’ll be Covenant signed and able to wash clean at the fountain.”

Lacey paused in her sweeping and looked over at Sister Lena swiping out the corners with the brush the Shakers made especially for that task. Small and birdlike in her movements, she had told Lacey she’d been a Believer for so long that she could barely remember her years before coming into the village.

“Have you washed in the fountain?” Lacey asked. It all sounded so strange coming from the mouth of Sister Lena, who seemed every bit as full of common sense as Miss Mona had been.

“Yea, what a gift. Three years now. One cannot begin to explain the feeling.” Sister Lena stood up and looked out the window. A strand of iron gray hair escaped her cap and she absentmindedly tucked it back out of sight.

“Did you see angels?”

“Oh my, did I see angels! Glorious winged creatures whose very presence burned even the least remnant of the desire to sin from my heart.” She turned toward Lacey with a smile all across her tiny face that made her wrinkles vanish. “That can happen to you at the feast as well, Sister Lacey, even if you can’t wash in the fountain. The angels sometimes choose a young Believer. As they did Sister Aurelia a few years ago when she’d only been with us a short while.” Her eyes sharpened on Lacey. “Like you.”

“Nay, I think not.”

“Don’t naysay the spirit, little Sister. Let it shower down on you and fill your heart. Those troubles that you have carried here from the world will vanish like mist on a summer day.”

When Lacey didn’t say anything, Lena sighed. “Perhaps in time you will be ready to accept the abundant gifts laid out for you here in this place.”

“You don’t have to be a Shaker to receive gifts of the Spirit,” Lacey said.

“So many do think.” Sister Lena shook her head sadly. “But Mother Ann has shown us the true way. If your feet aren’t set firmly on the path that she has made for us, then they are surely on the slippery path of destruction. A woeful path. One that I am sad to say many of our young sisters and brethren step upon, but I will pray that you follow after Sister Aurelia instead and find joy among us here.”

Sister Aurelia. A shining light among the Shakers. Now she and other instruments of the spirit gathered in front of the fountain area where they were sprinkled with spiritual incense and draped in mantles of strength, according to an elder who narrated the events. Then Aurelia spun out away from the others and began singing while passing around the fountain.

I sing for the angels who come down from above

And bring us bounties of blessings of love.

Blessings sent from our mother to land on us like a dove.

Strength and power abound on this holy ground.

She made a complete circle of the fountain and then did it once again. Lacey hadn’t heard Aurelia singing by herself before, but she had a beautiful voice that walked shivers up Lacey’s spine. It was easy to see why the Shakers thought the angels sang through her. But did they know she was the mother of a child? Without the sanctity of marriage. Had she confessed that to the Shakers and been forgiven? What had Eldress Frieda told Lacey? That all sins could be forgiven. Perhaps only those truly forgiven were given the powerful gifts of the spirit.

With the blessing song complete, a lively dance broke out among the Shakers. No circling in fine order or marching up and back with straight lines. Instead the men and women began jumping and shouting while clapping their hands. Some bowed low. Others reeled and staggered about as though dizzy with drink. A few fell down on the ground and began rolling around like dogs having fits. Lacey, along with others new to the feast, stood back out of the way of the spiritual mayhem. It was frightening and wondrous at the same time. Not because she would ever believe as they did, but because they believed so completely to surrender every inch of their body to their spiritual ecstasy.

Sister Drayma was there whirling and spinning. Sister Lena was hopping up and down and clapping her hands. Eldress Frieda was skipping around like Rachel when she was happy. The short little brother she’d seen so often with Isaac was leaping up and grabbing at the air as though he thought he could climb up into the sky. Lacey took a quick look around for Isaac and felt a strange gladness that he wasn’t taking part in the wild dancing. That like her, he was standing and watching in amazement but staying separate from their frenzied worship.

Then Aurelia was beside her, grabbing her arm and pulling her toward the dance. “Come, Sister, it is a time for dancing.”

“Nay, Sister Aurelia. I don’t want to dance.” Lacey tried to jerk away from Aurelia, but her fingers were like a vise on her arm. They stood there a moment with neither of them giving ground as Lacey stared into the eyes that she should have recognized at once as being so like Rachel’s.

“Aurelia is not here. I am Esmolenda and you must dance. Dancing with the angels is a gift you cannot refuse.”

“I see no angels. I see only Sister Aurelia who has been playing a game with me, pretending to be my friend while trying to steal my child’s love.” That was another thing Lacey should have known from the moment Rachel had talked about the angels saying Sister Rella loved her best. Sister Rella. Aurelia.

“Who stole the child first?”

“Not stolen. Given. The baby was given to Miss Mona. To me.”

“Given. Gifts are given but we cannot always choose our gifts.” Aurelia tightened her grip even more until she was bruising Lacey’s arm.

“Turn loose of me, Aurelia. I will not pretend to see angels I do not see.”

Aurelia’s face changed, lost the fierceness that had been burning in her eyes. Her hand relaxed on Lacey’s arm, but she still didn’t turn her loose. “But don’t you see, Lacey. Angels are all I have left to give you. Please come and dance with me.” Her voice was pleading. “With Esmolenda.”

What could she do but put her hand in Aurelia’s and follow her as she twirled through the Shakers around the fountain that had no water? But then it wasn’t much different from her spring dance to celebrate the return of dandelions. In fact, if she looked about, she could no doubt see a spot of yellow sunshine poking up out of the grass. But when she looked back over her shoulder, what she saw was Isaac, and she knew who she wanted to be dancing with as she followed Aurelia. Without a doubt, hysteria reigned.

31

Isaac watched Sister Aurelia pull Lacey down into the dancing Shakers. If what they were doing could be called dancing. Brother Asa had tried to describe what the Feast Day would be like, but some things defied description. Or understanding. Yet, now when Isaac caught sight of Asa among the dancers, he had a look of rapture on his face the likes of which Isaac never expected to know.

While Isaac had been feeling the timid desire to reach toward the Lord, doubts and fears kept pulling his hand back, but Brother Asa showed no sign of fear as he ran after the Lord with abandon. He believed. Isaac wanted to believe. He wanted to know Asa’s kind of faith. His mother’s kind of faith that was the bedrock of her life. Marian’s kind of faith that lit up her face with joyful peace even now as she whirled around the fountain rock. She didn’t look as if she’d ever had one doubt or one sin in need of forgiveness.

He had the urge to go down and put his hands on her shoulders to stop her spinning. To make her tell him how she got such faith. To show him how to lose his doubts and find forgiveness. But then she’d never done what he’d done. She’d lived in this tranquil place half her life and never been the reason for someone she loved to die. What did she know about the need for forgiveness?

The song they had practiced the night before came to mind. The Lord’s Prayer. His mother had taught him the words even before he went to live with the McElroys, and Mrs. McElroy made him repeat the prayer at least once a week.
Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
Debts. He had no debts and no one owed him the first thing. But Bible debts were different. Trespasses, transgressions, sins that could be held against him. Unless he forgave.

That was what Mrs. McElroy had told him. That to be forgiven he had to first forgive. He had stared the good woman in the eye and told her he didn’t care about forgiving anybody. That wasn’t going to bring his father back. His angry words had made her weep and pray over him, and when he was still unrepentant, she’d had Mr. McElroy take his belt to him. He’d taken the beating without protest. A just punishment for the unforgiven.

He didn’t deserve forgiveness. Ella was dead because of him. Her parents bereft. The judge’s wrath justified. It was only fitting that here in this place where he thought he could shut himself away from the world and live without feeling anything that he had fallen in love with a woman who could never be his. Another just punishment.

He was surprised when Lacey started dancing, but then he caught sight of her face. None of Brother Asa’s rapture there. No hint of the ethereal joy that played across Sister Aurelia’s face. She looked more like the awkward participant in a barn dance hoedown. A smile slipped back across his face. He didn’t want her to be one of them. Even if she wasn’t free to love him, he didn’t want her to be closed off to the possibility of love. Love and forgiveness.

Forgive and be forgiven.
The words echoed back in his head. He could forgive the judge for trying to exact revenge on him. He could forgive the McElroys for not being kinder to a grieving child. He could forgive Brother Verne for his lack of brotherly love and for the way he looked at Lacey. He could forgive Lacey for being married to the preacher.

Then do it
, a voice whispered in his head. He shut his eyes and once more reached for the Lord, this time with a steadier hand. “I forgive,” he spoke aloud, but even the man standing right beside him couldn’t have heard his words with the cacophony of songs and shouts rising all around them. “I forgive them all. Please. Grant me forgiveness in return.”

He waited to feel something different. For a light to suddenly break over him. For one of the Shaker’s angels to come down and touch his shoulder. Nothing happened. He wanted something to happen. Something he could feel. Maybe there were more people he needed to forgive. His father for dying and leaving him alone. Ella for calling out to her mother instead of to him as she was dying.

“I forgive them,” he said.

A sudden silence surrounded him. He wasn’t sure if it was only in his ears or all around him until he looked up and saw the dancing had stopped. Elder Joseph was calling forth some of the brethren to carry tubs to either side of the fountain. There were no tubs in sight, but several men stepped forward to pretend to pick up something and carry it to each side of the fountain rock.

The elder’s voice rang out. “Come all who are free of sin to wash in the waters from the fountain and scrub yourselves clean. But be warned, those harboring sins unconfessed and unforgiven must not defile the fountain’s waters.”

Isaac had no thought of joining the line of brothers preparing for their scrubbing pantomime. Although it would surely feel good to be scrubbed clean and fresh. A kind of new beginning. Like the paralyzed man lowered down through the roof by his four friends. Jesus had forgiven his sins and the man had stood and rolled his bed up and walked home. A new beginning. Perhaps the Lord had put that story in his mind. Perhaps that was his shining light. His sign.

You are forgiven.
Isaac didn’t hear the words spoken aloud, but he heard them in his heart. He wished the Shakers were still dancing so that he could jump for joy. He wished Lacey was beside him so that he could swing her up in the air the way he had in the woods when the calf had raised his head and flapped his ears free of the birth sac.

He sought her among the Shaker sisters. Even with all their like dresses, he found her almost at once as though his eyes were drawn to her like iron filings to a magnet. She had pulled away from Sister Aurelia and was making her way back to the outer fringes. To those who merely watched. She looked his way but didn’t allow her eyes to do more than touch on his face. She was right to do so. He was forgiven. It would be wrong to willfully jump back into sin.

A rumble of protest ran through the line of brethren waiting their turn to pretend to wash in the fountain as one of the brothers shoved through them. Some of the Shakers pushed their hands toward the ground and stomped as they began shouting, “Back from us old Ugly. Get away, Satan.”

But Brother Elwood pushed on toward the fountain stone with no notice of the shouts or the hands that grabbed at him. He seemed to have the strength of five men as he moved forward with singular purpose.

“Nay, Brother Elwood. You must not defile the fountain.” Elder Joseph’s voice carried the sound of doom, but the man paid him no mind. His eyes were fixed on the stone.

Isaac looked back at Lacey. She had stopped in her tracks and was staring at her husband from the world. Isaac’s heart squeezed together with sadness, but he made himself repeat the thought in his head.
Her husband.
She too looked suddenly very sad. Her shoulders drooped as she turned toward the fountain to go after Brother Elwood.

Lacey knew what she had to do as soon as she saw the preacher running toward the stone. It was time to pick up her cross and do the necessary thing. The poor man needed her. And he needed to be away from these people with their odd beliefs and weird ways of worship. She had danced with Aurelia, but she hadn’t felt the first whisper of angel wings.

Whether it was all pretend with Aurelia, she had no way of knowing. Perhaps angels did come down and take over Aurelia’s body. Perhaps Aurelia and Sister Lena and others did actually see angels, and it was more than some sort of strange hysteria leaping from one to another. She didn’t know. What she did know was that Aurelia wanted to entertain angels. That it gave her a feeling of power. A way to shape her world here among the Shakers.

But Lacey had no desire to receive such gifts. All she wanted was Rachel. As soon as she thought it, she knew that wasn’t true. Her eyes flicked back to Isaac, who was still watching her. She didn’t let her gaze linger. He was not her husband. Preacher Palmer was her husband. And he needed her to take his hand and march him away from this place while he might yet retain a shred of sanity.

The preacher was up on the fence enclosing the fountain rock. He teetered there for a moment before booming out in his preacher’s voice. “The spirits command me.”

“Nay, it is the devil that leads you, Brother Elwood,” the elder said. The other men, even Brother Forrest, must have believed the elder because they fell back as though afraid to draw too close to such evil.

“I will be forgiven,” the preacher shouted toward the sky. Then he jumped into the enclosure and moved through the handful of brothers who had been pretending to scrub each other free of sin. He climbed up onto the fountain stone and raised his hands toward the sky.

A few woes began sounding around the enclosure and then other voices joined in until the sound hung over the place like a black cloud. Lacey ignored them all as she went through the gate into the Shakers’ holy ground. The woes became like the sound of a gaggle of angry geese in the distance. She held her hand up toward the preacher.

“Come, Elwood. It’s time for us to go home. The Lord called you to preach his Word. You have been neglecting your calling. That’s all the balance you need. His Word in your mind and heart again.”

He looked down at her, his face creased with lines of despair. In the weeks they had been with the Shakers he had aged ten years. “Lacey. Don’t you understand? I have sinned.”

“We have all sinned, Elwood. Every last one of us.” She wasn’t sure if the Shakers had softened the sound of their woes or if she was just so intent on the preacher that they no longer sounded as loud in her ears.

“But I must seek forgiveness.”

“And it will be given to you.”

“Do you forgive me?”

“I forgive you, Elwood.” She reached her hand up a little higher. “Do you forgive me?”

“Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile.”

“See. The Word of the Lord is coming to you. Blessed are they who speak his Word.” She didn’t know if that was really in the Bible, but she thought it sounded like Scripture.

“Nay, you do not understand. ‘In whose spirit there is no guile.’” His voice rose until he was shouting the last words.

She studied his face then and realized she did not know this man. She knew the man she thought he was. A man with faults and foibles like any other man but a man of God, nevertheless. But she had only carried her idea of who he was. They had never shared any moment of closeness in all the years she had lived in his house, first as a near child and then as a woman. She did not know him or the secret sins he carried in his heart that were spreading anguish across his face. But none of that changed the fact that he was her husband. She said a silent prayer for strength and did not let her resolve falter as she continued to reach toward him.

“Take my hand, Elwood. Whatever you’ve done that torments you can be forgiven. You can surrender your guile and repent of your wrongs. That is the balance you need.” She made her voice strong and sure.

He stared at her for a long moment before he reached down and took her hand. Complete silence fell over the men and women around them as he stepped down off the Shaker’s holy fountain to stand beside her. She saw the words engraved in the stone and tried to turn him away from them, but he stopped and ran his free hand over them.

“Anyone who defiles this stone while in sin be warned.” He spoke the words slowly as though considering their meaning. He repeated the last two. “Be warned.”

“You didn’t try to bathe in the holy water,” Lacey said softly as she put an arm around him to guide him away from the stone. “Come, Elwood. Away from this place. It is only holy to the Shakers. Not to us.”

She kept her eyes straight in front of them as she led him through the Shakers. She wanted to turn to them and tell them to go back to their shouting and jumping and dancing and pretend scrubbing away of sins, but she kept as silent as they were. A few scattered woes popped up again around them and then some began singing.

Be joyful, be joyful, be joyful,

Be joyful, For Old Ugly is going.

Good riddance, good riddance, good riddance we say,