The Refuge Read online

  Brother Bertram pulled the cover back over Walter’s ravaged face. “He lived for a few minutes after he made it to the shore. Long enough to speak a few words.”

  I didn’t ask, but the man continued anyway.

  “He spoke of you. Said to tell Sister Darcie he was sorry.”

  I stared at the covered form in the wagon bed. “Did he say ‘Sister’ when he spoke of me?”

  “Nay, he did not.”

  2

  I waited beside the wagon until they brought Walter’s coffin. I kept my eyes averted as they placed his body in the box. I had seen him in death. Now I pushed aside that dreadful image to think of him alive and smiling. That was how I must remember him.

  The men carried the wooden box to the grave as other Shakers filed into the cemetery to see Walter laid to rest. The white bonnets of the sisters contrasted sharply with the black of the brethren’s broad-brimmed hats as they took up positions on opposite sides of the open grave.

  Sister Helene stood near me but thankfully sensed I could not bear to be touched. Eldress Maria made the laborious walk to the cemetery from the Gathering Family House. Others came whom I did not know. Perhaps they merely wanted a respite from their duties.

  I regretted my unkind thought and tried to be glad they were here. But how could I be glad about anything as I watched the men grasp the ropes threaded under Walter’s coffin to lower him into the ground?

  Elder Jacob, who often spoke at the Sunday meetings, stepped forward and removed his hat. The other brethren followed suit.

  “This brother was only with us a short time, but in that time he proved his worth as a Believer. Diligent in his duties, he embraced the Shaker way of hands to work, hearts to God. A man dedicated to taking up his cross and following the Shaker way.”

  I bit my lip until I tasted blood. What this man said did not matter. I knew what Walter truly wanted. Hands to work. Hearts to God. That much could be true, but I was treasured in his heart too. We would have left this Shaker village and found our own way with the blessing of the Lord. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.

  “Brother Bertram has told me of Brother Walter’s courage in giving his life to save others. Such is the example of Christ. No man can do more. We commit this good man to the earth and free his spirit to live forevermore in the perfect confines of heaven while we continue here to bring like perfection to our village. Such would be this brother’s wish for us, were he still among us.”

  Oh, if only he were. Then I could tell him of the baby and we could walk away from this place to begin the rest of our lives. Now here I was—alone.

  Elder Jacob nodded toward a sister and she began singing. The sorrowful tune pierced me.

  “Our brother’s gone, he is no more;

  he’s quit our coast, he’s left our shore.

  He’s burst the bounds of mortal clay.

  The spirit’s fled and soars away.”

  She sang on, each word a stone dropped into my heart. I could barely restrain from clapping my hands over my ears. Then that was nothing compared to the sound of dirt being dropped on the box that contained the man I loved.

  He was not there. I believed what the elder said about Walter moving on to heaven. He was a good man who loved the Lord. But I loved him, had rejoiced in being near his earthly body, with his voice in my ear, his lips touching mine. And now that body was being given back to the earth. Was it any wonder a wail of grief rose within me to clog my throat?

  I could not watch more. Each shovelful of dirt falling into the grave would have been the same as falling in on me, stopping my breath. I had to think of the baby. I could stay there and sink at these Shakers’ feet or I could run from their presence. I chose to run.

  Sister Helene moved to follow me, but Eldress Maria put out a hand to stop her. For that I was grateful. I wanted no company. At least none that could be.

  They say the Lord walks beside us through our deepest valleys. That he is with us even when we are too distraught to know his presence. I don’t doubt the truth of what they say or that the Lord was beside me when I ran from Walter’s grave. At the same time, I had never felt so alone. Achingly alone. How could I feel any other way with Walter gone?

  I made it to the orchard before my insides revolted. Afterward I leaned against the rough bark of an apple tree and was glad for the nausea that proved I wasn’t alone. Not completely. I carried new life within me.

  “Walter, you would have been such a good father.” I whispered the words on the wind. Perhaps they would carry to heaven.

  I walked on then. I had no desire to go back among people. Better here among the trees. My foot kicked an apple hidden among the grass. A windfall missed when the apples were gathered. Not many were left behind. The Shakers were thorough. I had helped with the apple picking the week before, when even the smallest apples were put into the baskets. Those too small to peel could be pressed into cider. Naught was wasted.

  This one didn’t go to waste either. I brushed away a yellow-striped bee attracted to the apple’s bruised side and, without bothering to so much as rub it off on my apron, took a bite. The crisp tang of the apple cleansed my mouth.

  I wandered on, paying scant attention to my direction. All I knew was that I went away from the Shaker village. After crossing a pasture, I stepped into another stand of trees, not fruit trees this time but hardwoods. Some had been harvested by the Shakers, who were continually building something. Harmony Hill was a thriving community with huge houses like the brick Gathering Family House where Walter and I had been given beds on opposite sides of the wide hallway. The rafters and underpinnings of the three-story house surely came from trees such as these.

  After I ate around a wormhole to finish off the apple, exhaustion fell over me like a shadow, and I sank down on the stump of what had once been a majestic oak. The rings adorning the stump gave testimony that the tree had stood in this place long before the first settlers came from Virginia. But now the tree was part of some Shaker building. Perhaps the meetinghouse. Perhaps the Gathering Family washhouse, where I spent hours last month in laundry duty until my back ached so much I struggled to sleep.

  If not for the many baskets of dirty dresses, shirts, sheets, and more, the chore would not have been that daunting. The Shakers used horsepower to pump water into a holding tank and then piped water to the houses. At the washhouse, they even had large drums of sudsy water where the clothes were churned without the need for washboards and paddles.

  My new duty of peeling apples was less strenuous, but tiresome in a different way. I looked down at my fingers darkened by the apple juice. I didn’t mind working. I never had. Walter admired that about me. He said I would tackle anything.

  Perhaps that was because he first met me tackling the impossible. That day he was an answer to prayer. Only later did I realize what a wonderful answer he was to a prayer I hadn’t even known was in my heart.

  When the cholera took my mother and little Rosie, I was nine, old enough to be of some use. But not old enough to take my mother’s place, or so thought my father. If he had given me a chance, I might have proven him wrong. But instead he farmed me out to Granny and Pap Hatchell, an older couple in our church. Pap gave my father a horse to let me live with them and help Granny with whatever she needed. I was glad to be of value and Pa needed the horse.

  The Hatchells couldn’t take my younger brothers, Richard and Bertie, so Pa brought them here to the Shakers. They were no longer here. Three years later, after my father found another wife, he fetched them out of the village and they went off to Ohio to start a new life.

  He came for me too, but Granny Hatchell needed me. And truth be told, I needed her and Pap. Their place had become my place. Back then, when Pa first left me with the Hatchells, I figured I had ended up better off than the boys who had to live among the odd Shakers. Now here I was in their midst with little recourse for changing that. Life can laugh at us at times.

  But I liked living wi
th Granny Hatchell. Oh, I had chores—cleaning, gardening, and such—but what she needed most was company. She was up in years. Twice as old as my own mother, but she had never been blessed with children. She didn’t know why the Lord made her barren, but she said it wasn’t right to question him. Best to accept the trials that came one’s way.

  The memory of those words stabbed me now. I had no acceptance of this new trial. I pushed away the now and remembered how Granny Hatchell took me to her heart and made me hers. I loved my brothers, but when Pa came for me, I couldn’t leave Granny Hatchell behind. I had moved on from my birth family to a new family. Pa pretended not to be relieved, but I had little doubt he was. I wrote them a few times. Ma had taught me my letters, and Pap Hatchell fetched home books I read to Granny Hatchell to keep me in practice. But I never heard from Pa or my brothers after they left Kentucky.

  The years went by. Good years. I grew but not much. I learned to cook and sew and make myself useful to Granny Hatchell. Pap Hatchell had wandering feet. He couldn’t stand being cooped up for long. Granny said she never figured out how she actually got him to the church to get married. Maybe it was because she didn’t make any demands on him. If he needed to do some walking around, hunting, or fishing, she packed his food in a knapsack and sent him on his way. She didn’t complain about taking on the load of the farm until he could stand having his feet under her table again for a spell.

  When I asked how come his wanderings didn’t upset her, she laughed. “I used to be bothered some, but weren’t nary a thing I could do to change John. That was how he was. I knew that when I worried him into marrying me. A body shouldn’t be trying to change other folks just to make things more convenient for her.”

  They had worked all that out long before I lived with them. But then that one summer, Granny had a bad feeling when Pap was gone past sundown. He hadn’t asked her to fix his knapsack of food. The next day I went hunting for him and found him on the riverbank a good ways from the farm. I knew he liked to fish there, but Pap had baited his last hook.

  He looked peaceful as anything, leaned up against that tree, but he’d done gone on ahead and left his shell of a body behind. Pap wasn’t a big man, but no way could I tote him home. Nor could I leave him there. Not after the shadow of an old buzzard sliced across the river water beside us. It might have been just passing by, but I couldn’t trust in that. More likely the ugly old bird was headed to fetch his friends. I’d seen what buzzards could do to a cow carcass. A useful service on this earth, but I wasn’t about to let them get to Pap.

  I sat down beside him to consider my options, much as I was sitting here on this stump in these woods. With his cold hand in mine, I tried to think of what to do. Naught came to mind. I waved away flies buzzing in on Pap and knew things weren’t going to take long to go from bad to worse.

  I prayed then. Granny Hatchell was a praying woman, and I could almost hear her whispering words in my ear to send up to the Lord. A simple enough prayer straight from one of the Psalms. I will lift up my eyes to the hills from whence cometh my help.

  Granny Hatchell loved that 121st Psalm. Whenever I read it out loud to her, she would say the words with me. She said the Psalms were songs for the Israelites. At times we would add our own tune to the words. My help cometh from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. I couldn’t remember every verse, but I did know the Lord promised to be my keeper, my shade from the sun.

  I was glad for the shade, for the cool breeze coming off the river and thankful it was September and not July with heat rising from the ground. But none of that changed me needing help. So that was my prayer when I lifted my eyes not to the hills but to the sky.

  No sooner had the words crossed my lips than I heard something coming through the woods behind us. I wondered what sort of animal was headed my way to complicate my need. O, ye of little faith, I upbraided myself when a man on horseback came out of the trees toward the river.

  A strong man from the look of his shoulders. Just what was needed.

  Intent on getting his horse to the water, he didn’t notice me there. So when I stood up and called out, he jerked around to stare at me.

  “I’m in the need of help,” I told him. “My grandfather has passed away here on this riverbank and I must take him home for a proper burial.” I saw no need in going into the peculiarities of my kinship to Pap.

  Walter took in the situation with one glance. That was the kind of man he was. The kind who did whatever needed doing, pleasant or not. The same as he tried to save those people on the riverboat and ended up dead for his caring kindness.

  He put Pap across his saddle, and with him leading the horse, we made the long trek back to Granny Hatchell. That gave us more than enough time to get acquainted. He was coming back from a river trip. Had a sister in town. But instead of going on to see her, he stayed to dig Pap’s grave and speak what sounded most as good as a preacher’s prayer after I read the Twenty-third Psalm to lay Pap to rest.

  Walter and I married before the first snow flew that winter. Granny Hatchell claimed she knew we would when she first laid eyes on him. We lived there with Granny, the three of us, happy as larks in a meadow teeming with bugs. We lost Granny Hatchell during a long cold winter three years later and now I had lost Walter too.

  I don’t know how long I sat on that stump with memories of Walter dancing around me before I heard the crunch of leaves. Somebody was coming through the trees toward me. I didn’t get up to run away. A person can’t hide forever from what comes next.

  3

  Sister Helene stopped when she caught sight of me and waited for me to acknowledge her presence. I wondered how she found me, but then eyes were always watching in the village. Watching was an assigned duty, the same as apple peeling or laundry. The Shaker leaders intended to make sure the brothers and sisters abided by the rules to stay apart. Those rules had chafed when Walter and I came to the village, but now it mattered not.

  “I am here, Sister Helene.” I don’t know why I said that, when she could plainly see me there in front of her.

  “Yea, I am glad to find you, Sister Darcie. We were concerned.”

  “Did Eldress Maria send you?”

  “She allowed me to seek you out to be sure you were all right.” Sister Helene stepped closer but still kept a proper distance. “Are you all right?”

  “Yea.” I lied. What else could I do? Even if I confessed my heartbroken state, Sister Helene had no power to assuage my sorrow.

  “You are very pale.” A worried frown wrinkled her forehead. She was a year younger than me, but somehow seemed even younger. Perhaps because she had been with the Shakers since she was a child of five. She told me she could imagine no other life. Wanted no other life. That I could not imagine.

  She was plain, but then the Shaker bonnets and wide neck kerchiefs had a way of making every sister plain. I felt plain when I put on the cap that hid my red hair. I had stripped the cap off earlier as I walked across the pasture. Not that I hadn’t worn bonnets before coming to the Shaker village. I had. A woman needed to shade her head, but today I worried not about the sun.

  I liked my hair free. I had even unwound my plaits to let my curls bounce wherever they willed while I thought of how Walter liked to touch those curls. My hair always made him smile. He’d sometimes bought me hairpins, I think just so he could pull them out and let my hair fall down over his hands.

  Sister Helene had light brown hair cut very short to be of little bother when she dressed in the mornings. She often frowned at my hair falling to my shoulders before I stuffed it out of sight under my bonnet. Her eyes were like mine, a mixture. Hers a mixture of green and blue. Mine a mixture of brown and green. Specked with sunlight, Walter said.

  I liked Sister Helene. She may have been assigned to me as a duty to bring me into the Shaker fold, but she didn’t care for me simply out of duty. Genuine warmth came from her kind heart, as she sincerely wanted to be my sister. So now I was not sorry to see her.

  “I wa
s sick earlier.” I scooted a bit to the side of the huge stump and held my hand out to her. “Come sit with me.”

  She looked relieved to be invited near. “I hope you haven’t lost your cap.” She perched on the stump beside me, our skirts overlapping.

  “Nay.” I used the Shaker word. “I have it in my pocket. It may be creased in wrong places.” That was the way I felt. Creased in wrong places.

  “As long as it isn’t lost.” Sister Helene’s smile looked timid, as though she feared letting it completely win over her face.

  “Lost.” I echoed her word. “So many things lost.”

  She put her hand over mine then. “You loved him, didn’t you?”

  “Very much.”

  Her next words surprised me. “I have wondered how it would feel to love a man. A husband.” When I didn’t answer right away, she hurried on. “Such thoughts are sinful and I will have to confess my waywardness to Eldress Maria. Yet I can’t seem to stop wondering about such things, even though Mother Ann’s teachings are plain. Marriage causes stressful living and not the peace and unity we seek here in our village.”

  I’d heard much about Mother Ann, the founder of the Shakers, since coming to Harmony Hill. She was the one to decree marriage sinful. The Shakers considered her the female part of the Christ spirit. Their name even represented that. Not Shakers. That was the world’s name for them. They did not shun the common name. Instead they accepted the moniker and used it on the products they peddled to the world.

  But they began their society in New York as the Believers in the Second Coming of Christ. I didn’t believe it for a minute. It mattered not how much Sister Helene or Eldress Maria tried to worm those ideas into my head. I didn’t doubt their Mother Ann was a holy woman who knew the Lord and truly believed in what she taught. Nor did I doubt that the fervor of her belief caused her to shake and tremble when she worshiped. Her followers did the same and thus the name Shakers.