The Seeker (43 page)
The kid looked dazed, but he nodded and leaned on Adam as they made their slow progress away from the field of battle. Exploding shells rocked the ground like a volcano about to break through the crust of the earth to add to the destruction. Adam shut his mind to the bullets. He didn’t think about the artillery shells. He just thought about putting one foot in front of the other and getting the young reporter to safety. He hadn’t been able to save his brother, but he could save this kid.
Please, Lord.
The prayer rose unbidden in his thoughts almost at the same instant the shell exploded overhead. Fragments rained down to their left, but missed them. They were making it, moving out of range. A few more steps. Adam could hear the horse whinnying. He didn’t know how with the crash of the guns all around, but he did.
Please, Lord.
A few more steps. He didn’t hear the bullet that hit the arm he had wrapped around the kid’s waist. He just felt the thud as it knocked both of them forward. The kid cried out, but he didn’t stop breathing, so Adam kept moving. He didn’t even look at his arm until he was up on the horse with the boy in front of him. Blood was streaming down his hand. His right hand. His drawing hand.
He stared at the wound. The bullet had glanced off the bone of his forearm above the wrist. It was a good ten seconds before he had the nerve to try to move his fingers. The first two moved; the last two didn’t. He fished a handkerchief out of his pocket and wrapped it tightly around his arm. A big chunk of his skin was gone, but he could live with that. As long as some of his fingers moved. As long as he could still hold a pen or a brush.
The kid in front of him on the horse groaned and fell forward. Adam caught him and turned the horse away from the battle. He left the boy, still breathing, at a house the surgeons had turned into a field hospital. He didn’t let the doctor look at his arm. Waved it off as nothing serious, even though his blood had soaked the handkerchief and his shirt. He couldn’t take the chance of losing consciousness and waking up without his hand. The army surgeons were too quick with the knife and saw. He’d chance death before he chanced that.
Please, Lord.
On October 8 the day once more dawned hot and clear at Harmony Hill. The pastures and late gardens desperately needed rain, but the air carried so little moisture that the night no longer even licked the grass with dew.
That morning as the sisters left the Gathering Family House to go to their duties, Sister Altha paused to gaze up at the cloudless sky. After a moment she sighed and shook her head. “Not the least sign of rain. It must be the good Lord has turned his face from our village because he can’t bear to look down on the misguided soldiers passing along our road on their way to slaughter one another. How sad the sinful hearts of the world.”
“Yea.” The sisters following her down the steps and out into the village echoed her words with obedient agreement. Charlotte spoke the word without thought.
Sister Altha lowered her eyes from the clear sky to the women behind her. “Never fear, my sisters. In time Mother Ann will convince the Eternal Father to turn his face back to us. When we can shed this odious burden of cooking for the Southern army and can once more go forth in exercising the worship due our Mother and the Lord, laboring songs and attending to proper industry, then the gift of refreshing rain will fall upon our ground again.”
Indeed the whole village looked trampled and weary after the onslaught of Confederate soldiers passing through in such desperate need of food and water. But on this Wednesday morning with the road mercifully empty of soldiers, the Shakers set about taking stock of the damages done to their fences and gardens by the pillaging troops.
Charlotte hoped the Confederate soldiers would continue south and leave Kentucky behind forever. Many of the Shakers expressed that same hope as the morning passed quietly. And yet the workers seemed to be continually looking over their shoulders down the road as if fearful the peace of the day wouldn’t last.
When Charlotte carried Sister Martha’s midday meal to her, the old sister said a messenger had come in with the report of a large army of Union troops chasing after the Confederates.
“I hope the Rebels keep retreating to the south without stopping to engage the Northern army.” Concern wrinkled Sister Martha’s gentle face. “For if the armies meet, the encounter will surely result in a dreadful battle such as those in the East. Those illustrated in
Harper’s
by our artist friend. Another time of death.”
Charlotte did pray as she walked back to the Gathering House to partake in her own midday meal. Not just that there would be no battle, although she did fervently pray that. But she also prayed for rain and that Sister Martha would have enough appetite to eat the food she’d taken her. She prayed Adam would be kept from harm wherever he was. She prayed for a clear path, to know where she needed to be.
She wasn’t sure why she lingered with the Shakers except that she seemed reluctant to step away from the safe haven of being Sister Charlotte. And didn’t she need to stay to see to Sister Martha? And what of Aunt Tish? It was easier to simply be Sister Charlotte, one of many sisters instead of someone who had to make decisions about sifting through the ashes of Grayson and finding a way to keep her promise to Landon.
Then there was Adam. Charlotte dreamed of looking up and seeing him at the Shaker village again as she had last summer. This time she wouldn’t run away from him. But even as she was sure of that, she wasn’t sure what she would do. Or what he would want her to do. While he had often referred to the garden in his letters, their meetings there had been fleeting. Perhaps she was imagining things to think love could have taken seed in those brief moments together. At least in his heart. She could not deny that it had flowered in her own.
Each of his letters had been like rain and sunshine to cause her feelings for him to grow. But though she treasured every pen stroke, no one could imagine them love letters. The Shakers would have never allowed any improper words of sinful worldly love to be delivered to her eyes. Yet Sister Martha thought Adam did seek her affections. Affections that were already his if he would only come back to claim them. Then her way would be clear of doubts just as the sky had been clear of clouds for days.
She was hurrying up the steps to keep from being late for the midday meal when a boom that sounded much like thunder rumbled in the distance. Even though she chanced being late and missing her meal, she paused to look up at the sky. The sun was shining as brightly as ever. No storm clouds gathered on the horizon.
Another boom followed the first and then another. Charlotte shut her eyes and shuddered as she suddenly realized that instead of the welcome thunder of nature’s rain clouds, these booms were the unnatural thunder of cannon fire. Even as she stood there and listened, men were dying. Men who perhaps only the day before had eaten food she set on a table for them. Men who had smiled and laughed before they marched away to die on this day. She felt so heartsick that she no longer cared about the meal she was missing.
As the afternoon passed, there was nothing to do but shut her ears to the distant booming reports of the cannons and try to close her mind to the image of bleeding and dying men as she worked in the garden alongside Dulcie, gathering the last of the dried bean pods from the vines. But each boom rattled her soul and made her want to put her hands over her ears. Dulcie seemed to feel the same as they picked the beans and filled their baskets without talking, each tensed waiting for the next sound of death in the air.
As the sun began to sink toward the western horizon, the booming continued unabated. When they came out of the garden, Landon broke away from a group of boys trailing after Brother Ballard to run and wrap his arms around Charlotte’s waist.
“Is the world coming to an end, Sister Charlotte?” he asked in a voice that trembled.
The child looked so woebegone in his Shaker clothes and hat that Charlotte wanted to hold him tight against her, but instead she pushed him away before Brother Ballard could reprimand him. She leaned down to look directly in his face as she answered. “Nay. Has not Brother Ballard told you the sounds are from cannons?”
“Like on pirate ships?” he asked.
“Yea, much like that described in storybooks.”
“But this isn’t in a storybook.” Landon looked toward the horizon.
“Nay.”
“Brother Landon,” Brother Ballard called to him with firm expectation in his voice. “Come back. It is not permissible to run away from the group.”
Charlotte gave him a little push toward where Brother Ballard waited for him. “It might be easier if you pay attention to Brother Ballard’s rules,” she told him.
“I do most of the time. But it’s a bad rule if it keeps me from talking to my sister.” He turned back to her to ask one last question as he did every time he saw her. “You won’t forget your promise?”
“Never, my little brother,” she whispered. Only Dulcie was near enough to hear their words, and Dulcie was not a faultfinder. Besides, her mother’s heart would understand.
After he hurried back to be the obedient Shaker boy again, Dulcie fell in beside her on the path. “Will you take him with you when you leave?”
Charlotte quickly looked at Dulcie. She didn’t say if. She said when. “Leave?” Charlotte said. “What makes you ask that?”
“And what keeps you from answering it?” Dulcie lowered her voice even though there was no one near them on the walkway. “Haven’t we ever spoken frankly with each other when we worked as long as we didn’t have to worry about spying eyes or listening ears?”
“Yea, forgive me, Sister Dulcie. It is my confusion of spirit that makes the answer difficult. Not your question. But I have promised to be his sister. So either I must stay here or take him if I go.”
“I would that I had such a choice.” Dulcie sighed.
“Perhaps someday you will.” Charlotte’s mind raced as she wondered how she could help Dulcie. “If I—”
With the ghost of a smile, Dulcie touched Charlotte’s arm to stop her words. “You can’t fix everything for everyone, Sister Charlotte. Even as much as you want to. You must leave some things to the Lord above.”
“But I want you to be happy, Sister Dulcie.”
“There are many ups and downs to happiness. I think contentedness might be a better blessing.”
“Are you content?” Charlotte looked over at Dulcie walking beside her.
Dulcie kept her eyes on the pathway in front of them as they moved on toward the Gathering Family house. “In time I will be. My spirit no longer struggles so actively against the boundaries here. It is not a bad place.”
“Nay,” Charlotte agreed. “I have learned much about my own spirit here among the Believers.”
Dulcie went on as if Charlotte hadn’t spoken. “I think seeing the soldiers in the last few weeks has helped me appreciate the peace to be had here at Harmony Hill. I may not be able to hold my children to my bosom, but they are in the bosom of peace. I am thankful for that. If someday the Lord makes a new path for me to walk, then I will step out on it, but now I am not so reluctant to walk the Shaker way as I was.” Dulcie turned to look directly at Charlotte’s face. “But you don’t have to settle for contentment. You can chase happiness. You should chase happiness.”
“Yea,” Charlotte said as she met Dulcie’s honest brown eyes.
“My spirit does seek such. If love can bring happiness.”
Dulcie lowered her voice even more. “Perhaps not always happiness, but there will be joy.” She reached over and squeezed Charlotte’s arm. “If your pathway leads there, run along it.”
Charlotte’s heart leaped at the thought, but she had already spoken too plainly if other ears than Dulcie’s happened to hear. Besides, it surely was wrong for her to be contemplating happiness or joy even as the cannonade to the south continued to pound against her ears.
As the evening deepened into night, the thunder of the cannons thankfully ceased. A deep silence fell over the village, but there was little peace in it. It was too easy to imagine the scenes of death and destruction that might lay in the moonlit fields to the south.
Charlotte was awake the next morning before the rising bell. She stared out the open window in the sleeping room to watch the first fingers of dawn creep up into the sky and cringed as she waited for the cannons to start again with the light of day. But no booms came. All was quiet except for the call of a mourning dove and the crickets no night had yet been cold enough to silence. But it appeared the night had silenced the artillery. Perhaps the battle was over.
That proved to be the case as battle-weary soldiers began to straggle back through Harmony Hill. The beginning trickle became a streaming flood by the third day as once again soldiers clustered around the kitchen doors in search of food. As before, the Shaker sisters abandoned all other industry to prepare meals for the hungry troops. The brethren set up a long table on trestles in the yard of the Trustee’s Offices next to the road. It not only seemed more efficient to lay the food out in the open in easy reach of the men as they passed through the village, it also kept men with the stain of death on them from too familiar contact with the sisters.
Once again it was the Confederates who came through Harmony Hill, and with them they brought news of the battle. The armies had met near Perryville where the Rebels claimed to outfight the Yankees in spite of being greatly outnumbered. It was only the sheer number of the Union army that had sent the Confederates into retreat back along the main route to the south.
Many had died. Many more had been wounded. When reports came in that churches and houses in the town had been converted into makeshift infirmaries, the Shakers loaded wagons with food and other necessary supplies for the wounded.
“We cannot grow weary of doing good,” Sister Altha said as she directed Charlotte and Dulcie in helping gather the supplies to load on the wagons. “Mother Ann instructs us to share of our bounty. In her writings we read of the necessity to do all the good we can, in all the ways we can, as often as we can to all the people we can. That surely includes these hapless and misguided men.”