The Seventh Messenger

by Carol Costa

  Mary nodded and stepped outside onto the sidewalk. She was wondering what possessed her to buy every piece of the artist"s work without regard to price. She hadn"t even looked at the pieces displayed by other artists at the gallery. Perhaps it was Assanti"s charm that influenced her. She knew it was his charm that caused the warning bells to ring in her head and drive her away from him.

  Mary walked quickly towards her hotel. She would go to her room and order lunch and then relax with the book she had brought along to read.

  At the hotel, Mary stopped at the desk to make sure there were no messages for her. There were none, so she went directly to her room. She was just taking off her coat when the telephone rang.

  “Mrs. Purnell?” the caller asked.

  “Yes.”

  “It"s John Assanti. I tried to catch you before you left the gallery, but you were too quick.”

  “What can I do for you Mr. Assanti?” Mary said in what she hoped was a cool tone.

  “You can let me buy you lunch. I"m downstairs now.”

  “I don"t think…”Mary began.

  Before she could finish voicing her refusal, John interrupted her. “Please, don"t say, no. You purchased everything in my exhibit so now I have nothing to do for the rest of the afternoon, and I"d really like to talk to you. We can have lunch right here in the hotel dining room.”

  Mary considered her options. She could refuse and hang up and spend the afternoon alone in her room, waiting for Coy to return or she could go to lunch with a very talented artist.

  “All right,” Mary agreed. “I"ll be down in a few minutes.”

  The menu in the hotel dining room didn"t offer many vegetarian choices, but Mary ordered a salad and coffee. Assanti ordered a steak.

  Mary asked the artist whether he had his own studio to work in.

  “Not at the moment. I"m staying with a group of other artists, but I"m looking to move on to a permanent place where I can work alone without distractions.”

  “Your work is really good,” Mary told him. “I think it will sell very well at the park.”

  “I think so too.”

  “Do you have a family?” Mary asked just to make conversation.

  “I"m a widower and like you, have a grown son.”

  “I see.”

  “I would like to join the House of David,” Assanti said as the waiter arrived with their food.

  Mary looked at the steak Assanti had ordered and smiled. “You know that we are vegetarians,” she said.

  “Oh, no.” He seemed embarrassed. “I didn"t know. Does this steak offend you?”

  Mary laughed. “Not at all. I"m just telling you that life in our colony is very different from what you may be used to.” John cut into his steak and took a bite. Mary turned her attention to her salad. They were quiet for a few moments while they ate.

  “I can live without meat,” John said suddenly.

  “There"s much more to it than that,” she warned.

  “I"m sure there is, but I"m willing to adapt.”

  “Have you always had long hair and a beard?” she asked.

  “No. I began growing it last summer after I saw your ball club play and did some research on your organization.”

  “Everyone who comes into our colony gives up their own worldly possessions and lives according to our laws.”

  “No meat, no sex. What else?” he asked.

  Mary felt flustered again. “You"ll have to study our sacred writings to learn more,” she said.

  “I"ve already read your husband"s book and other writings.”

  “You have?”

  She stared at him across the table trying to figure out if he were sincere or just playing her for a fool. He smiled at her.

  “Look, I know what you must be thinking, and you"re right. I"m not really interested in following your laws, but I need a place to live and work. The purchases you made today are the first money I"ve made in a long time. Other than my art supplies and a small savings account, that"s the only money I would have to contribute to your colony.”

  “We often accept poor families into the colony provided they are willing to work for the common good of all our people.”

  “I understand that. I need a place to live and work and you need art objects to sell to the public. My work is like food and water to me. I can"t live without it, so I"m willing to give the fruits of my labor to you in exchange for food and shelter in your community.”

  “I would have to discuss the matter with my husband,” Mary told him.

  “Of course.”

  “I"m assuming you would want your own private studio to work in?”

  “Yes, but I would be willing to live in the same space. My needs are very simple.”

  After lunch, Mary went with Assanti to the house that he shared with other artists. It was a rundown, filthy place and she could understand why he would want to leave it. Assanti took her to the space where he slept and worked. There he showed her sketches of the art objects he had designed and hoped to be able to complete.

  “These are truly wonderful,” Mary said unable to hide her amazement. There were many sketches of Jesus as an infant and an adult and of his mother. There were also an array of angels in different poses. Mary instantly envisioned the items displayed in the cases at the House of David Park.

  John walked Mary back to her hotel. Before they parted, Mary told him to come to Benton Harbor on the following weekend.

  “You must meet Benjamin. If we agree on living and working conditions, one of our people will bring you back here with a truck to pick up your belongings and bring you back to the colony.”

  John raised her hand to his lips and kissed it lightly. “Thank you,” he said softly.

  Mary watched him turn and walk back down the street. The air was colder in the late afternoon than it had been at any time during the day, but Mary no longer felt the chill.

  *** After all these years, the memory of that day still seemed to warm Mary"s heart. She paused and smiled at Naomi.

  “My mother used to talk about Mr. Assanti and how much she admired his work.”

  “Yes. John was a wonderful artist.”

  “So he was already at the colony when my mother and her family arrived.”

  “I believe so.”

  “My mother was a very young girl when she came to the colony, but she never speaks of those days. What can you tell me about her?”

  Mary sighed. “Most of what I know about Evelyn"s early days at the colony, I"ve learned from other people. And there are several things that happened in those years that eventually affected your mother and her life that I did not personally witness.”

  “But you know about them?” Naomi prodded.

  “Yes. I"m just saying that some of what I have already told you and much of what I am about to tell you is based on stories that were passed on to me by people who either witnessed the events themselves or heard about the events from others and related them to me. I will try to tell the story as honestly as I can, but I am an old woman and the happenings may be distorted by my own emotions and memories.”

  “I don"t care,” Naomi declared. “You are the only person who has any information about that time in my mother"s life and I want to hear everything you can tell me.”

  “Very well,” Mary said. “I will continue the story.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Benjamin was also impressed with John Assanti"s artwork, and it made good business sense to allow the artist to become a member of the House of David colony. In exchange for a private studio and his basic needs, John signed an agreement that gave the House of David the exclusive rights to sell his work at the park and in the catalogues the colony was now printing and distributing.

  A building that had been built for storage behind the Diamond House was quickly converted into a studio with an adjoining kitchenette and bedroom.

  By the time spring approached, John had produced a number of beautiful statues and plaques. Mary often visited John"s
studio on the pretense of monitoring his progress with the art objects. Their feelings for each other had become stronger with each passing day.

  Benjamin"s actions had become more and more worrisome to Mary and with Coy out of town for weeks on end with the baseball team, Mary"s relationship with John was the one bright spot in Mary"s life.

  “I would like to purchase a boat,” Benjamin announced at one of the weekly business meetings held in the offices at the Diamond House. “I need to be able to travel out onto the lake with my Inner Circle to meditate and instruct them.”

  “Lake Michigan is often treacherous,” Mary said quietly. No one else commented. They had learned long ago that Benjamin"s suggestions were not to be questioned. Benjamin turned to his wife with a look of annoyance.

  “The angels tell me that the waters will provide inspiration and tranquility. Do you doubt the messages I receive from them?”

  “No one doubts your word, Benjamin,” Jacob said quickly. Since Daisy"s departure, Jacobs"s devotion to both Mary and Benjamin had seemed to grow stronger. He often placed himself in the middle of their disagreements trying to defuse them. “I was speaking to my wife,” Benjamin told him sternly. “Jacob is correct,” Mary said, wanting to end the argument.

  “I was only concerned for your safety as you have never sailed before.”

  “I will have an experienced sailor at the helm of the boat. Surely, one of our members is knowledgeable about the sea.” “Actually, I do,” Jacob said. “I grew up alongside the ocean

  and I come from a family of fishermen.”

  Benjamin smiled. There was no one in the colony more

  trustworthy or more protective of him than Jacob. He could be

  trusted to guide the boat safely and ignore the activities Benjamin had in mind for himself and the girls from the Inner Circle. Silas cleared his throat and spoke. “There is a ship builder

  right across the bridge in St. Joseph. I suggest you and Jacob

  look for a proper sailing vessel there instead of traveling to Chicago.”

  “I have a new family to greet today,” Jacob said. “We can do it tomorrow then,” Benjamin suggested. He

  turned to Mary again. “Would you like to come along?” he

  asked.

  “No thank you,” she replied. Mary wanted nothing to do

  with the purchase of a sailing vessel. She suspected it would not

  be used to seek inspiration and tranquility for her husband, but

  for the privacy he sought to take further advantage of the girls

  he had chosen for his Inner Circle.

  As it was, the girls chosen for the Inner Circle were allowed

  to live in the Diamond House. They were settled into the empty

  rooms in the house on the top floor. Mary ignored them completely and insisted that their rooms be on the opposite end of

  the house far removed from her suite at the front of the building.

  The colonists didn"t seem to mind turning their daughters

  over to Benjamin. In fact, as far as Mary could tell, they thought

  it was a privilege to be chosen to serve the King.

  *** A few hours later, Jacob stopped the wagon he was driving on a recently acquired farm property. The newest members of the House of David colony, Adolph and Ruth Warren and their teenage daughter, Evelyn, climbed out of the wagon and followed Jacob to the log cabin built on the property.

  Evelyn was seventeen, a pretty girl with long black hair and dark eyes. It was obvious that the farmland surrounding the cabin had not been worked for some time. Corn stalks had wilted and faded in the sun without water to keep them alive. Remnants of dried-out tomato plants were struggling to survive among the waist-high weeds. It would take a lot of work to plow the fields and replant them. However, the fields meant little to Evelyn as her parents had never required her to work the fields. She was good with animals and took care of the horses and chickens on the farm they had sold in Illinois.

  Jacob pushed open the door to the cabin. It consisted of one large room that served as the kitchen, dining room and living room. Off of this room were two small bedrooms furnished with beds and plain wood dressers.

  “There"s no bathroom,” Evelyn said, not trying to hide her disapproval.

  “There are two outhouses on the property,” Jacob said calmly.

  “Those smelly things with flies everywhere,” Evelyn replied. “I"m not using one of those.”

  “Excuse my daughter"s rudeness,” Adolph told Jacob, giving Evelyn a silencing look.

  Jacob nodded and went back outside to start unloading the Warren"s belongings from the wagon. Evelyn confronted her father.

  “You can"t expect mother and me to live in this awful place. You just can"t.”

  “It"s perfectly suitable, Evelyn,” her mother told her. “You"ll get used to it.”

  “I won"t. I thought we were going to live in a nice place, like those buildings across from the amusement park.”

  Jerusalem and Bethlehem were constructed for the colonists who work in the park. You are welcome to use the dining hall and the laundry facilities there.”

  “I"m a farmer, Evelyn,” her father said. “This is where I belong.”

  “Well, I hate it,” she replied.

  “Stop your fussing child,” Ruth said firmly. “You act like we came from a palace.”

  “It was a palace compared to this place. At least it had a toilet in the house.”

  Embarrassed by his daughter"s complaints, Adolph turned to Jacob intending to apologize again, but Jacob held up his hands to stop him. “No need to say anything, Adolph. The girl is just upset. Joining our colony means leaving many material comforts behind, and it requires some getting used to.”

  Evelyn started to voice another complaint. Quickly, Ruth grabbed her daughter"s arm and began leading her toward one of the small bedrooms. “Hush, your mouth now,” she said quietly. “This is your room. We"ll bring your things in from the wagon and you best get unpacked.”

  Evelyn shook free of her mother"s grasp and walked into the bedroom and flung herself down on the bed. The mattress was hard and unyielding and the girl let out a cry of disgust.

  “When will I meet with Benjamin?” Adolph asked Jacob.

  “After the dinner hour tonight. Come, we"ll look at the fields and we can talk about how they should be replanted.”

  The farmland assigned to the Warren"s needed more work than they could handle to get it ready for the spring planting. Other colonists came to the farm every morning for the next few weeks to help with the plowing and the planting of tomatoes and corn.

  Chickens were purchased from another farm in Benton Harbor and a coup was constructed. Evelyn was given the job of feeding the chickens and gathering the eggs. Since Ruth Warren preferred cooking to eating in the communal dining hall, some of the eggs were kept on the farm. The rest of the eggs were delivered to the kitchens at Bethlehem and Jerusalem.

  The first weeks passed slowly for Evelyn. She felt like a prisoner desperate to find a way to leave the farm, but she had no money and no friends to help her. It was not that her life in Illinois had been so wonderful. They were poor people and their farm there had been in an isolated area, so Evelyn didn"t have much of a social life. She had attended school and did well in her lessons, but never felt accepted by the other girls who lived in town and didn"t have to wear the ugly sack-like clothes Evelyn"s mother sewed for her.

  Once Evelyn"s figure started to mature, the boys flocked around her, but she was smart enough to know that they were only hoping for a physical relationship with her. She soon realized that her looks were an asset, but in school the attention she got from the boys only made the girls dislike her more. She had hoped that moving to Michigan and joining a colony would provide a better life, but so far, her life at the House of David was worse than the one she had in Illinois.

  Evelyn was bitter and angry at her parents and barely spoke to them, but Adolph and Ruth were used to thei
r daughter"s moods and didn"t try to draw her out of her depression. They felt she would adjust in time.

  The highlight of Evelyn"s day in the colony was taking the eggs to the kitchen and picking up food items from the huge pantry to bring back to her mother for their family meals. Once a week, she also brought in her family"s clothing and linens to wash in the laundry room.

  A number of young men who worked in the kitchen and the laundry tried to engage Evelyn in conversation, but she refused to respond to them and they soon became discouraged and gave up on her.

  The House of David Park was scheduled to open for the season and the park staff worked overtime to get everything ready. The band was rehearsing, the souvenir stands were being cleaned and stocked, the engines of the miniature autos and the steam engines of the trains were being overhauled and the zoo animals were being transferred from their indoor winter cages to the outdoor cages at the park.

  Evelyn began walking over to the park after making her egg delivery in the afternoons. She liked the frenzied activity that was going on there and she liked walking through the zoo and looking at the animals that were getting settled into their summer homes.

  Behind the zoo was the baseball field. When she was in the kitchen one day in May everyone was talking about the baseball team and the big game that was to be played that weekend.

  Evelyn didn"t care much about baseball, but she walked over to the field to take a look anyway. The team was on the field practicing. Several people were sitting in the stands watching them, so Evelyn decided to join them.

  A tall lean young man was on the mound throwing pitches to the batters who were hitting most of the balls into the air.

  “Coy is looking good,” the man sitting next to Evelyn told her.

  “Who is Coy?” she asked.

  “The pitcher.”

  “I thought the idea was that the pitcher kept the batters from hitting the ball.”

  The man laughed. “He"s throwing them good pitches on purpose for batting practice. Wait until tomorrow when he pitches against the LaPorte team. It"ll be a different story then.”