The Blessed Read online

  He hadn’t hated his father. He’d loved him so much his heart swelled to fill up his chest when he was with him. He wanted to be just like him, with the smile that won friends before a word was spoken, with the courage to chase his dreams even when Isaac’s mother worried those journeys might mean not enough food on the table for his family, with the power to never let that happen. He’d been strong and invincible to Isaac.

  Then the boiler on the steamboat had blown and his father hadn’t been strong enough. He’d left Isaac cold and alone on the riverbank while angry talk circulated among the survivors that the steamboat valves were tied down and hams thrown into the boiler fire to increase the heat. The new owners had a bet with another steamboat on the fastest time down the river. Isaac’s father was one of the new owners. He’d gone down below the deck to check on the boilers. He would have wanted to win. He always wanted to win.

  “Coming out on top, son. That’s the thing,” he’d often told Isaac. “Doesn’t matter where you start so long as you come out on top.”

  He wouldn’t think Isaac was on top of anything, sitting there with the old Shaker nodding off to sleep while he tried to think of which sin to admit next. “No need admitting anything,” his father would have said. “Not even to the good Lord.”

  If Isaac’s mother heard that, she always made sure to add that the good Lord already knew everything anyway. If that was true and Mrs. McElroy’s Bible had echoed Isaac’s mother’s words, then it hardly seemed necessary to spend a morning of sunshine repeating them all again for the Lord to hear by way of the elder’s ears.

  But there was always a price to pay for anything in life, and Isaac was willing to go along with the Shaker way in order to put his feet under their table for a few weeks. So he skipped right past half his growing up years and didn’t mention again his blame for Ella’s death and simply said, “I often speak without proper thought and my words sound wrong.”

  Elder Homer opened his eyes and looked long at Isaac as if expecting more, so Isaac added without proper thought, “And I don’t pray as much as I should.”

  “Did you not pray when your wife of the world fell ill?”

  Isaac looked down at his hands. “Those prayers weren’t heard.”

  “All prayers are heard, my brother. Not all are answered as we think they should be, but we must trust in the wisdom of the Father God who may have been using this sorrow to show you the error of your ways and the evils of the world and that is why you now sit here with me.”

  “A just God would have carried me away with the fever instead of my wife.”

  “God’s justice is not our justice. Such we cannot understand.” The elder stood up and leaned on the table in front of him as though he needed to give his legs a moment to accustom to standing.

  “I don’t understand much of anything,” Isaac admitted as he scrambled to his feet. He didn’t think he should be sitting if the old elder was standing.

  “Yea, that is true for many who come among us. You have much to learn, and here you will have ample opportunity to practice the grace of prayer and thoughtful speaking. It is good you have come to be part of our family here at Harmony Hill.” The elder’s lips curled up a bit in a smile. Nothing like Brother Asa’s cheerful acceptance of Isaac as he was—hungry, dirty, and friendless. But nevertheless a smile of acceptance.

  “I will try to do as you say,” Isaac said.

  “You will not always be successful, my brother. But when you fail, your spirit will be cleansed by confession.”

  “To you?”

  “Yea, but not as this has been. We have many new converts. There would not be enough hours in the day to hear the confessions one brother at a time. We will meet in a group with all given the opportunity to rid their souls of sin. Your guide into the Believer’s life will tell you when.”

  “My guide?”

  “Yea, each novitiate must be taught the ways of the Believer. And guided in the proper performance of your duties. Come. Brother Verne will be waiting in the hallway to start you in your assigned duties. Planting today, I would surmise, since the sun has dried the fields and it is necessary to get the crops in the ground in a timely manner. We depend on our harvest and the work of our hands.” The elder held up large hands that had surely once been strong and able, but now their wrinkled skin was covered with age spots and some of his fingers misshapen with arthritic knots. “Hands to work and hearts to God. With that to guide you, you will do well.”

  Isaac followed the elder out into the hallway and down the east stairway. A brother was always to use the east doors and stairways while the sisters used those on the west of whatever building they were entering. Brother Asa had made sure he knew that the night before.

  “There are many rules,” Asa had said after he told Isaac to step on the stairs with his right foot first. “It is a way to feel joined and in union with all your brothers in discipline and service. In time the rules disappear.”

  “You mean you no longer have to do things a certain way?” Isaac asked.

  “Nay, instead you will no longer note them as rules but only as part of your Shaker life.”

  “Is there punishment if you forget the rules and step with the wrong foot first or go in the wrong door?”

  “Nay.” Brother Asa smiled broadly. “None of the sort you may be imagining. The punishment would be in the loss of harmony with your fellow Believers.”

  Isaac had wanted to say that he wasn’t a fellow Believer. He didn’t even know what the Shakers did believe except the little Marian had tried to tell him. He’d paid scant attention to her words about believing in the second coming of Christ. He hadn’t even given much consideration to the first coming of Christ, in spite of his mother’s and Mrs. McElroy’s admonitions that he would face a life of ruin if he didn’t look to the Lord for help.

  And now here he was in just such a ruined life, following after Brother Verne to work long hours in the fields, tamping seeds into the ground. Listening to Brother Verne instruct him on precepts of the Shakers’ Mother Ann. Learning songs about simple gifts. Practicing dance steps that Brother Verne claimed were worship that would open him up to receive the spirit. Assuming postures of silent prayer upon rising in the morning, before and after every meal, and before lying down on the narrow cot at night. Kneeling on the proper knee first to keep from hearing Brother Verne’s displeasure with Isaac’s inattention to the rules.

  Isaac had yet to determine what spirit the dances would bring. He hadn’t been to a meeting in their worship house. Nor did he have any prayer words in his head when he knelt along with all the other brethren. He was empty of prayers. Empty of all thoughts as he obediently followed the unsmiling Brother Verne from duty to duty.

  Brother Verne took his task of guiding Isaac along the Shaker pathway with solemn diligence. He was as different from Brother Asa as night from day. Tall and so slim that his shirt hung loose from his shoulders and was only kept from billowing out from his body like a flag in the breeze by the suspenders that held up his trousers. His full head of hair, as dark brown as his eyes, seemed proof he wasn’t old, but it was hard for Isaac to think of him being young.

  When Isaac didn’t restrain his curiosity and asked how old he was, Brother Verne frowned at the intrusive question. “The counting of the years of a man’s life seems to me a bothersome custom of the world. The only birthday that matters is that when a man reaches the age to sign the Covenant of Belief.”

  “What age is that?” Isaac asked, not because he really cared, but just to keep words in the air. That seemed necessary at times or at least better than the heavy silence that often settled over them in between Brother Verne’s instructions.

  “Twenty-one.”

  “So you were raised here like Brother Asa?” Isaac asked.

  “Nay. I was not so blessed to escape the sin of the world at such an early age as our Brother Asa. I came into the village with the need to cleanse my life of the sin of matrimony.”

  “You’
re married?” Isaac couldn’t keep the surprise out of his voice. “I didn’t think you could be married here.”

  “You don’t listen well, Brother Isaac.” Brother Verne looked at him like a weary teacher might a recalcitrant student. “I cleansed my life of that sin when I came into the village and began to walk the Shaker way. My wife of the world and I lived as brother and sister among the other Believers.”

  “So which sister is she?” Isaac didn’t know why he asked. He knew only a few of the sisters’ names. The Sister Mae who had brought food to him and Brother Asa on that first night. The ancient Sister Lettie who had treated the wound on his hand with such efficient care.

  A few other women’s names had been spoken in his hearing, but there were many sisters. Nameless faces downturned and shadowed by their caps as they passed him on the pathways or while eating their meals on the opposite side of the silent dining room. He had a better look at their faces as they practiced their marching dances in the upper room of the Gathering Family House, but even there the men and women shared no words other than the words of the songs as they wound in and out in the dances without ever touching. He’d not yet even seen his own sister, Marian, but such a meeting was being arranged for the next night when the Shakers shared what they called Union night. On those nights Brother Verne had told him brothers and sisters were allowed to meet in small groups to discuss the work of the day.

  So Isaac wasn’t really bothered when Brother Verne ignored his question. The two were walking to the men’s bathhouse to wash off the dirt of the field before the evening meal. While they needed the good dirt to grow their crops, the Shakers didn’t believe in carrying any of it into their houses. Everything in the village was brushed and swept as the sisters waged an ongoing war with dirt of every description. They had even practiced a sweeping dance the night before, as they attacked the dirt that might seep into one’s heart and soul with pretend brooms.

  It wasn’t until they were leaving the bathhouse and Isaac had almost forgotten the question that Brother Verne answered. “That sister is no longer here in the village. She turned back to the sinful ways of the world.” The man’s voice was low, almost as if he were talking to himself instead of Isaac.

  “She left?”

  “Yea. Each person must choose for himself or herself the proper road. She chose the slippery slope to sinful destruction. Not a slope I want to find my feet on ever again.”

  “Didn’t you love her?”

  “Such worldly love is the cause of much sin. Our Eternal Father revealed to Mother Ann that we must relinquish all such ties and seek a life of grace and forgiveness.”

  “But . . .” Isaac started and then stopped. He couldn’t imagine deserting his wife to live among these people, but then Ella’s face with tears streaking down her cheeks as they rode away from Louisville came to his mind. In the end he had deserted her needs for far less.

  Brother Verne peered over at him. “A man’s soul is not a trifle to be thrown away for the lusts of the world. Each man must pick up his cross and carry it. Such is the Believer’s path away from sin to purity.”

  For just a second Isaac imagined doubt in the man’s eyes, but then the staunch Believer returned. So Isaac bent his head and stared down at his feet as he said the Shaker yea in agreement. For whatever time he was there, he could stop speaking without thought and answer yea to the teachings Brother Verne wanted to force into his head. That was little enough to pay for the food they were giving him and a place to hide away from the judge’s eyes. A coward’s way perhaps, but then hadn’t Brother Asa claimed the gift of cowardice for him?

  10

  Lacey didn’t think things could get any stranger at the Ebenezer preacher’s house after the regretful marrying words, midnight attic visit, and breakfast eggs splattered all over the kitchen wall. But that was before the Shaker men showed up with their seeds and stayed with their preaching talk. They came back every day of the week to sit out on the porch with the preacher and go on and on about dancing worship and men and women being brothers and sisters. More than once Lacey wanted to ask them when they aimed to sell the seeds they’d been so anxious to find buyers for when they showed up on that first day.

  It was always the one called Brother Forrest, but sometimes the young brother wasn’t with him. So maybe he was out selling seeds and tending to their proper business. The preacher didn’t buy any seeds from them even though Lacey had asked him to see if they had butterbean seeds. She was particularly fond of the plump, half-moon beans and how a bowl of the beans were filling enough to be all she needed to cook for supper.

  Truth was, she was ready to plant anything just so she and Rachel could be out in the sunshine digging in the dirt instead of stuck in the house. She was worn out with overhearing the preacher and his new Shaker friends go back and forth about what this one believed or that one believed on how to set a body’s feet on the path to salvation.

  Miss Mona could have told them. She could have quoted them Scripture and had them all understanding the way things should be. Especially for Lacey. Lacey hungered for Miss Mona’s sensible words in her ears, pointing to this or that Bible passage to help Lacey figure out what she needed to do next. Hiding from the truth of her situation didn’t seem to be working, but she kept doing it anyway. The garden was a good place to hide.

  On the third afternoon that the Shaker men came to the porch, Lacey carried them water and then took Rachel out the back door over to the graveyard behind the church. There they dug up the ground beside Miss Mona’s gravestone to plant some iris bulbs. Purple and white. Miss Mona’s favorites. They put them to the side of the stone so the flowers wouldn’t cover up the name Reuben Harrison had chiseled in the stone.

  Reuben was the nicest man at Ebenezer Church. He never looked crossways at Lacey when he smiled and said, “Good morning, Miss Lacey.” The words came off his tongue without the first tinge of condemnation. Sadie Rose would probably say that was because the poor man didn’t have enough sense to know right from wrong.

  The good man was a little slow in his thinking, but he was at the church every time the doors were open and first to stand up to volunteer for any work that needed to be done at the church or the preacher’s house. He was the one who had brought his mule to turn over the sod for Lacey’s garden last fall. He was the one who dug out the first shovel of dirt for every grave in the church graveyard. He was the one who spent long hours carefully chiseling the names in the stone markers for those graves.

  Lacey ran her hands across the letters of Miss Mona’s name. The stone was warm from the midday sun.

  Rachel abandoned the earthworm she’d been letting crawl across her hand and came to lean against Lacey’s leg. “Is that Mama’s name?”

  “Mona Wilson Palmer.” Lacey took Rachel’s hand in hers and helped her trace out the letters on the stone with her finger. “She loved us.”

  Rachel stared at the stone. “Tell me about how you found me on the back porch.” The little girl looked up at Lacey. “The way Mama used to tell me.”

  “You mean the true story and not a made-up Maddie kind of story?”

  “The true story. I was in a box on the porch and I wasn’t crying. Angels were watching over me.” Rachel started the story she’d heard so often. Miss Mona’s words ran through Lacey’s mind as familiar as a nursery rhyme.

  “That’s right.” Lacey kept one hand on the stone and the other flat against Rachel’s back. But instead of telling the story the way Miss Mona used to, with angel wing embellishments here and there, Lacey told the story as true as she could remember it. “At least you weren’t crying right at first. You were all wrapped up in a soft quilt and sucking on your two middle fingers when I went out the door to go draw water from the well. It was early in the morning, and the sun was just peeking up over those trees in behind the house. It was the tenth day of September, and one of those special days with the air so clear and bright that a body just knows something good is going to happen.”

>   “Did you know I was coming?”

  “No, but later when I thought back on it, I remembered feeling the day was special as soon as I opened my eyes that morning. I was humming when I came down the steps to help Miss Mona get dressed. I didn’t always feel that way in the morning. Sometimes I wanted to just bury my head under my pillow and sleep a little longer, but that morning it was like the Lord pushed me out on my feet and told me to get with it. That this was a day I didn’t want to miss.”

  “And then what happened?” Rachel looked up at Lacey, her blue eyes eager for this new telling of her story.

  “Well, when I got downstairs, there was Miss Mona sitting up in her bed reading her Bible. She looked up at me and said, ‘This is the day the Lord hath made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.’”

  “That was out of the Bible, wasn’t it?”

  “It was. But then Miss Mona told me to get ready for something good to happen.”

  “Where was Papa?” Rachel asked.

  A little shadow drifted over the fun of telling the story, as Lacey didn’t want to think about the preacher that day or this day either. But she kept smiling as she said, “He must have been still asleep, because he didn’t know about how me and Miss Mona were feeling all crawly with joy even though we didn’t know why yet.”

  “So then what happened? Did you go to the well?”

  “I started to the well, but I didn’t get there. When I opened up the back door, there you were. A gift from heaven.”

  “Did I fall out of the sky?” Rachel looked up at Lacey as if she wasn’t sure of the answer, even though she asked that very same thing with every telling of the story.

  “Oh no. Babies don’t fall out of the sky.” Lacey didn’t stray from Miss Mona’s answer but used her exact same words.

  “Then how did I get there?”

  Miss Mona had always slipped past that question by talking about the angels watching over Rachel, but Lacey didn’t do that. She looked straight into Rachel’s eyes as she said, “Somebody who loved you very much put you there. Somebody who knew Miss Mona and me would love you just as much.”