“Did you love me right away?”
“We did. Even before I unwrapped the quilt from around you to count your toes.” Lacey leaned down and tickled Rachel’s bare toes. “They were a lot littler then.”
Rachel giggled and pulled her foot back. But then her smile faded.
“What’s the matter, honey?” Lacey asked her.
“I wish I knew who put me there.” Rachel dug her toes down in the newly turned dirt. “Jimmy says angels couldn’t have done it. That it had to be my real mother. The one I was born to. He says everybody has a born-to mother. That even Jesus had a mother he was born to.”
“Well, Jimmy’s got that right, but sometimes for reasons we can’t always know, the Lord gives a baby to somebody else. And then you’re born to their heart the way you were to me and Miss Mona.” Lacey wrapped Rachel’s hand in hers and put it over her heart.
“That’s a real purty thought, Miss Lacey.”
Lacey jumped a little when the man spoke. She looked over her shoulder to see Reuben leaning against a gravestone closer to the church. They had been so intent on their story that they hadn’t noticed him coming into the graveyard.
“Mr. Reuben,” Rachel yelled. Her smile came back as she ran toward him. He had a stick of candy pulled out of his pocket for her before she got there.
Lacey straightened up and smiled at him too. He had his rake and shovel.
Her smile faded. “Nobody’s passed on, have they?”
“Oh no, miss. I just come to make sure none of the stones had sunk during the winter freezes. We wouldn’t want Miss Mona’s stone to get crooked.”
He followed Rachel back over to the grave. He set each foot down solid and careful as though he planned out where he was going to land each step. He wasn’t very tall, but built solid like a tree trunk. Lacey had no idea how old he was. He seemed ageless. A man-sized boy with a generous heart, who was as much a part of the Ebenezer church as any deacon there.
He studied the ground beside the stone for a moment before he said, “If you’d a told me you needed to do some digging, I’d a done it for you.”
“We only dug a little to plant some flowers.”
“She’ll like that,” he said. “Miss Mona liked purty things. She’d a liked that story you told about finding Miss Rachel. I remember that morning.”
“You do?” Lacey was surprised. He’d never told her that before.
“I saw her on the porch.” His words came out slow. Reuben never talked in a hurry.
Lacey looked for Rachel to see if she was paying attention to what Reuben was saying, but she had run over to the church steps. She wasn’t taking any chances Lacey would tell her she couldn’t eat her candy until after supper. Lacey looked back at Reuben’s round face. “The baby you mean.”
“I saw the box. I didn’t have no way of knowing a baby was in it. I figured it was potatoes or maybe beans for Miss Mona and the preacher. It was her I saw.”
“Her?” Lacey suddenly felt very still inside. How come she had never heard about this before?
“The one who brung the box.”
“Did you know her?” Her heart thumped up in Lacey’s ears as she waited for his answer. Rachel’s words echoed in her mind. Everybody has a born-to mother.
He shook his head once. “Weren’t nobody from church. But I’d seen her talking to the preacher before. Folks come talk to him, you know. When they’ve got troubles.”
“They do,” Lacey said. “How did you know she had troubles?”
“She was crying some that day when the preacher was talking to her out behind the church house. I didn’t hear nothing she said, because I turned around and went on back home. It ain’t right to bother the preacher when he’s helping somebody with their troubles. My mam always made sure I knew that.”
“Did you tell Preacher Palmer you saw her put the baby on the porch? After you knew it was a baby and not potatoes.”
“Miss Mona told me not to.”
“Miss Mona?” Lacey wasn’t sure she’d heard right.
“She said I shouldn’t tell nobody. Not the preacher. Nobody. That whoever the girl was had enough trouble heaped on her without us adding more.”
“Did she know who she was?”
“She never said no name.” Reuben looked down at his feet and then poked the ground with his shovel. “Guess as how I shouldn’t a ought to told you, but somehow it seemed like she was pushing me to tell you.”
“Who? Miss Mona?” Lacey frowned a little.
“Now don’t go being upset with me, Miss Lacey. I ain’t thinking on Miss Mona being a ghost or nothing, but sometimes it’s like she’s still talking to me in my head. Like she knows I got to talk to somebody. I could always trust Miss Mona whenever I needed help with anything. Like writing out the names for the stones. She always did that for me, but then you had to write out her name. I figure she would want me to be trusting you now.”
Reuben couldn’t read. He painstakingly copied out the lines of the names on the tombstones he chiseled without knowing which letters made which sounds.
“I could teach you your letters, Reuben.”
“Miss Mona tried once. Before you came to live with her. I couldn’t keep those markings in my head no matter how I looked at them. But I know my numbers. I can count to a hundred.” He smiled up at her. “You want to hear me?”
“Not right now, Reuben,” Lacey said and then felt guilty when Reuben looked disappointed. “How about just to twenty-five?”
His face lit up again as he started counting. “One, two, three . . .”
She kept her smile on her face as he said the numbers slowly and carefully, but in her head it was his words about seeing the woman put the box on the porch that she was hearing. And Miss Mona had known. Miss Mona had told him to keep it a secret.
Her candy gone, Rachel came back to stand between Lacey and Reuben as he counted. The little girl threw in a number with him sometimes when he paused, but if it wasn’t the right number, he’d shake his head and keep steadily on. He wasn’t a person to be thrown off track. A butterfly floated by to distract Rachel from the man’s number recitation, and she took off chasing it. At last Reuben said twenty-five.
“That was nice, Reuben. Thank you.”
He smiled sheepishly at her praise. “Wasn’t nothing to it. I like counting. I count most everything. There’s sixty-four graves here, you know, and twenty-three hymnbooks in the church. There used to be twenty-four, but somebody must’ve took one home and forgot to bring it back. We had forty-six people at church Sunday counting the preacher.”
When Reuben paused to consider his next count, Lacey jumped in with a question. “Have you ever seen her again?”
He looked puzzled by her question. “Seen who?”
“The woman you saw bring the box to our porch.”
“She weren’t no woman. Not much more than a girl like you, Miss Lacey. But no, I never saw her no more. And my mam always said I could remember faces like I can remember numbers. Like I could see you ten years from now and still know you was Miss Lacey.”
“I won’t forget your face either, Reuben.” Lacey touched his arm. “But maybe Miss Mona was right and we shouldn’t talk about the girl anymore. Everything worked out the way the Lord intended.”
“That’s what Miss Mona told me. That it always does. She said the Lord could make a person see sunshine on the cloudiest day.”
“And the devil can bring clouds on the sunniest day.”
Reuben’s smile faded. “Yes, ma’am. I have knowed her to say that too, but she told me to think on the sunshine and not the clouds. So that’s what I do. You should too.”
“You’re right. I should,” Lacey said. “I will.”
But it seemed like the clouds kept gathering even with the sun beating down on them as she and Rachel walked back to the house. The Shaker men were still on the porch, and she’d no more than set foot in the yard than they were wanting her to come up and sit with them. To listen to their no
nsense. She made them wait until she got Rachel settled down for a nap with her Maddie doll. The digging and chasing after butterflies had worn the little girl out, and her eyelids were drooping even before Lacey spread the little coverlet Miss Mona knitted over her legs. She didn’t even ask for a Maddie story. So Lacey had no reason to delay going out on the porch.
“Do you need more water?” she asked as she stepped out on the porch and gently shut the door behind her. She tried to smile, but the attempt died on her lips in the face of their solemn expressions.
“Nay,” the older Shaker said as the younger one jumped up out of the chair the Preacher had carried out of the kitchen for him. “Please sit and join us.”
Lacey looked at the chair but made no move toward it. “That’s kindly of you, but I need to be about my chores.” She reached back toward the door.
“Sit,” Preacher Palmer ordered.
She looked across the porch at him and wanted to defy him. To tell him to throw his glass if that would make him feel better, but that hardly seemed proper with the two Shaker men there between them. She moved in front of the one called Brother Forrest, who was intently studying his hands spread out flat on his knees, and perched uneasily in the chair. The young Shaker sat down on the edge of the porch with his back toward her. She was having the same bad feeling about this that she’d had listening to Reuben in the graveyard. The clouds the devil was blowing her way were thickening. Served her right, she supposed, for not remembering to pray more for the sunshine.
The silence deepened on the porch and almost clanged in the air as the seconds ticked past. The Shaker men didn’t move. They all sat there as though one of them had heard something and now the rest of them were listening to hear it again. A bobwhite call or more likely, with the way they sat stiff and on edge, a mountain lion’s snarl. Nobody had heard any of the big cats in this area since before Lacey was born, but Miss Mona said they were prowling the woods when she first came here with Preacher Palmer to start their church in the wilderness.
Actually Lacey wouldn’t have minded hearing the big cat scream. It would have taken the men’s thoughts off whatever they were waiting for somebody to say and she could go inside, bar the door, and be safe for at least one more night. Of course she couldn’t bar the preacher outside or the two Shaker men either. Then there was Reuben over in the graveyard with nothing but a shovel to defend himself. She shouldn’t be conjuring up any mountain lions to bring new trouble down on them.
When she peered over toward the church house to see if Reuben was still there, she could only see the front of the church and none of the graveyard from where she was sitting. But there would be a clear view from the back porch. She pushed those thoughts from her mind. One bunch of clouds at a time.
Lacey folded her hands in her lap and waited. She wasn’t going to be the one to shatter the silence over them. After what seemed like a half hour, the preacher cleared his throat. When he spoke, it was almost as slowly and deliberately as Reuben, like the words were having a hard time getting from his head to his mouth.
“Brother Forrest here, he says our marriage is an abomination in the eyes of God and his Mother Ann.”
Lacey was so taken aback by his words that she forgot to watch her own tongue. She stared straight at the preacher and spoke right out loud with no consideration of the other two men sitting there listening. “Well, for heaven’s sake, I could have told you that without you spending three days out here on the porch fussing back and forth.”
A smile slipped across the older Shaker’s lips, and he raised his hand up to cover his mouth and wipe it off his face. “It seems our young sister already has her feet firmly on the Shaker path to salvation.”
That wasn’t true at all, and she wanted to deny it outright. But she’d already spoken out once when she should have kept her mouth shut. She wasn’t about to do it twice.
11
The next morning Preacher Palmer was up early with his hat on and out the door before he even finished swallowing his last bite of biscuit. They didn’t talk about the Shakers or anything else. Words were scarce as hen’s teeth between them, but then that was hardly new. Even before Miss Mona passed on up to heaven, Lacey hadn’t shared many words with the preacher other than paying mind to his Bible readings and his sermons.
Now it was more a report of this or that church member who had dropped by to give news of somebody sick in the community or stating the need for coffee or flour when the preacher made his trip into the town on Saturdays. One thing Lacey had to say for Preacher Palmer. He didn’t deny them any of their needs or ever complain the first time about fetching home yard goods for her to make Rachel a new dress.
Lacey heard him ride his horse away from the house. He wasn’t a bad man, she reminded herself as she sat at the table sipping her tea. He hadn’t said where he was going, but there was always somebody needing the preacher’s ear or prayers in the church community.
Rachel was still asleep up in the attic room. Now with the preacher out and gone, the house was quieter than church at prayer time. Miss Mona used to call such early morning minutes before work had to commence the sweet part of the day. A time when a person could think on what the Lord might be wanting to plant in that person’s heart. That was, if a person could push aside all the stray worries that wanted to hang around from the day past.
Lacey shut her eyes and tried to do that. Just clear out her head completely. To go back to a better time before she had to worry about being the preacher’s wife. Or not being the preacher’s wife in the common way. Again the thought was in her head. Preacher Palmer wasn’t a bad man. He was a man chosen by God to shepherd his people. He was a man chosen by Miss Mona to love. Neither one of them would have picked a bad man.
It wasn’t him and it wasn’t her. Imperfect both of them, but not chasing after evil. It was the knotty situation they had got embroiled in, like a skein of yarn yanked and tangled in a hundred wrong ways until there didn’t seem any way to pull out a loose string. A person had to sit down and patiently untangle each knot to make the yarn useful again. But she wasn’t sure she could undo these knots she and the preacher had gotten tied up in, no matter how diligently she worked at the untangling.
An abomination in the eyes of God. The words burned through her mind. If she really thought that was true the way she’d told those Shaker men and the preacher, then shouldn’t she just stand up and walk away? Wouldn’t it be better to go off in the woods and live on roots and berries than be part of something the Lord thought an abomination?
Lacey looked up as though expecting to see some answer coming down to her. But all she saw were the smoke-blackened planks over the cookstove that she should have already washed down in spring cleaning. The ceiling would have never gotten that black if Miss Mona were living to see it. She was an ardent believer in spring cleaning for both the house and the soul.
Lacey could almost hear the dear woman’s words in her head. “Sweep out bad thoughts that bedevil you. Knock down the cobwebs of poor attention to the Bible teachings. Mop up any feeling sorry for yourself and cast out grudges like you’d throw out a broken chair that can’t be fixed and is taking up room that could be put to better use. A body’s spirit needs a good going-over on a regular basis to keep it pleasing to the Lord.”
Lacey sighed a little and was glad to hear Rachel’s bare feet coming down the stairs, stepping whisper soft, to give her a reprieve from thinking on how she surely needed that spiritual cleaning every bit as much as the ceiling needed washing. The same as every morning the little girl made a beeline for the kitchen to lean against Lacey for a hug. Lacey breathed in her sweet child scent and held her a little closer. A gift from heaven.
She’d been wrong when she’d agreed with those Shaker men. Whatever allowed her to put her arms around this little child and be her mother, that couldn’t be an abomination. A tangled mess for sure. But hadn’t Miss Mona told her over and over that there wasn’t any mess the Lord couldn’t make right if a b
ody surrendered it up to him? That the trouble with most people was they wanted to rush on ahead and try to fix things on their own instead of waiting for the Lord’s perfect time. That’s what she and the preacher had done. Rushed on when they should have waited.
Now as she turned loose of Rachel to stand up and dip her out a bowl of oatmeal, she could only hope the preacher wasn’t rushing on again instead of giving the Lord a chance to untangle their mess. But it was worrisome thinking on how intently he’d listened to those Shaker seed peddlers as they talked about their perfect ways and how their village was like heaven on earth. As if any human being could bring down heaven and live perfect.
If there was one thing Lacey knew for certain, she couldn’t. The second thing she was pretty sure of was that the preacher couldn’t either. Then while she might not ought to pass judgment on those Shaker people, somehow even without knowing any but the two who had spent three afternoons on her porch, she suspected they lacked some being perfect too. For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God. That was what the preacher had quoted to the Shakers that first day out on the porch. Paul’s words to the Romans. Preacher Palmer had without a doubt spoken that verse in church or wherever he was witnessing for the Lord hundreds of times.
All have sinned and come short. Those words kept running through Lacey’s head as she went about her chores. Some truths a person just couldn’t get away from.
That afternoon she was standing on a chair, scrubbing clean the kitchen ceiling, when she heard somebody coming up the front porch steps. She thought at first it might be those Shaker men back to find the preacher. The last thing she wanted to do was talk to them after she’d admitted being an abomination, and she thought to keep quiet and let whoever it was think nobody was home. But Rachel was in the front room playing with her doll and she ran right for the door.
The Blessed Page 11