“Miss Sadie Rose.” Rachel squealed and jumped up and down. “Did you bring Maddie’s new dress?”
Lacey finished wiping off the planks on the square of ceiling she could reach before she climbed down off the chair. As she dried her hands on her apron and went into the front room, she had the uncharitable thought that she’d have rather seen the Shaker men. At least she could have sent them on their way. Now she’d have to sit down and drink tea and wait for whatever it was Sadie Rose had come to tell her. It wouldn’t be good.
They settled on the front porch with the tea Lacey stirred up the fire to brew. They didn’t have anything sweet to go with their tea, because crumbs were all that was left of the Sunday spring cake in the pie safe, and Sadie Rose hadn’t bothered to bring cookies. But she had brought the promised new dress for the Maddie doll, so Lacey couldn’t hold no cookies against her.
At least Sadie Rose hadn’t brought Jimmy with her to whisper more of his troublesome words in Rachel’s ears. They sat there in the early afternoon sunshine and talked about the sick in the community. Mr. Jarvis had tried to pick up the end of a log and bothered his back. Dottie Whitlow was nigh on ready to birth her fourth baby, and Sadie Rose was lining up women to carry food over to the family during her confinement. And of course she knew Lacey would want to help out. The church windows could use a good washing, and the women needed to set aside a day for some spring cleaning at the church. Like Lacey was doing at the preacher’s house. Miss Sadie Rose almost looked approving when she said that.
Lacey listened and waited. Sadie Rose had her work clothes on the same as Lacey. She hadn’t even put on a clean apron. That meant she’d taken time out from the middle of her chores for some purpose other than noting the dirty windows in the church building.
The tea was all gone in both their cups and they’d run out of sick people to talk about before Sadie Rose set her mouth in a hard line. She put her cup down on the porch with a clatter and leaned forward a little with her hands on her knees, like as how she was ready to take Lacey on.
“I reckon I should just be out with it, Lacey,” she said.
“Miss Mona always thought that the best way. If you want to say something, say it. Don’t leave a body guessing.”
“Dear Mona.” Sadie Rose sighed and looked sincerely sad. “I do miss her and the steadying influence she had on the church. Even when she wasn’t able to walk over and meet with us at the church house, we knew she was praying for us and that the good Lord was bending down his ear to hear her and us.”
“Do you think he’s stopped bending down his ear to listen?” Lacey asked. It was a question she needed answering, because there’d been times in the last few weeks when she’d felt that might be true. But then she reminded herself that a person had to send the prayers up for the Lord to bend down to listen. That’s where she’d been negligent since Miss Mona died. She’d think prayers but then let them slide right out of her mind without offering them up proper. It was like she was afraid of the answers the Lord might send down to those prayers.
Sadie Rose’s forehead wrinkled up in a frown. “No, no. Of course not. That wasn’t my meaning at all. The good Lord pays attention to anybody’s fervent prayer. But that doesn’t mean I don’t miss Mona. Or that Preacher Palmer doesn’t. She was a steadying influence on him too.” The woman’s eyes sharpened on Lacey. “And on you.”
Lacey glanced over at the steps where Rachel was singing to her Maddie doll and was relieved to see the child wasn’t paying the first bit of attention to any of her and Sadie Rose’s talk. Lacey looked back at Sadie Rose, who was still leaning a little forward in her chair as if ready to argue down anything Lacey might say. But Lacey didn’t want to do any arguing. Being crossways with Miss Sadie Rose and the churchwomen was just another mess of tangled knots she was in.
Lacey stared down at the cup she was holding and felt a tear threatening to leak out of her eye as she said, “I didn’t want Miss Mona to die.”
Sadie Rose let out a breath of air and then surprised Lacey by reaching across to touch her hand. “Of course you didn’t, Lacey. We know that. We all know that.”
Lacey didn’t look up at her. She kept her eyes on the woman’s work-worn hand with its calluses and chapped skin. Sometimes it was easier to stay mad at a person than to stand up to her kindness without completely falling apart. Becoming a puddle of tears wouldn’t serve any real purpose.
“We know the fault of none of this can be laid at your feet, Lacey. We’re seeing that more and more.”
Surprise wiped the tears right out of Lacey’s eyes as she looked up at Sadie Rose. “How’s that?”
Sadie Rose sank back in her chair and didn’t meet Lacey’s eyes. Instead she studied her hands now twisted together in her lap. After a long moment with the only noise Rachel’s chatter to her doll over on the steps, the woman let out a tired sigh. “I’ve never felt it proper for church members to speak ill of their pastor. Always thought the error in thinking was more apt to be in the church member than the man the Lord called to be his messenger of the Scriptures.”
Lacey didn’t know what to say to that, so she kept quiet. For a minute she didn’t think the woman was going to say anything more, but then she looked up at Lacey before letting her eyes drift to something beyond Lacey’s head. Something in the air that might make what she was wanting to say easier to speak out loud.
“We’ve . . . me and Harold, I mean. We’ve been hearing some disturbing news about Brother Palmer. We were of the mind to not think much about it, knowing the preacher the way we do. We figured it was some kind of mistaken thinking on them that were doing the talking to Harold, but then this Shaker man came by with his seeds this morning before Harold went out to the field. Jacob, he said was his name. Not much more than a boy and so mixed up on the truth of the Bible. We were all right with that. A person has to make his own choices and we could pray he’d see the light. But then he said our preacher had sent him our way and that he was hoping we’d be as open to the true way to salvation as Brother Palmer. The true way, mind you, like we didn’t already know that way. Like we were the ones who didn’t know the truth instead of them. Like the Bible didn’t tell Adam and Eve to go forth and be fruitful.”
Miss Sadie Rose’s voice had started out calm enough, but with each word it rose a little, like as how she was trying to outtalk a thunderstorm only she could hear. Rachel looked up from playing with her doll, then deserted Maddie on the steps to come lean against Lacey and stare at Sadie Rose with big eyes. Lacey figured her own eyes were every bit as big. She didn’t try to say anything to stop the stream of words coming out of Sadie Rose’s mouth. She just listened.
“That they—we’re supposing he meant him and others of those Shakers—had been talking a right smart to the preacher and thought that come Sunday Brother Palmer might be bringing us all the truth of how Christ hadn’t just come to earth once, but how he had to come back as that woman they go on about over there in that Shaker town.”
Sadie Rose’s eyes came back to Lacey’s face. She didn’t pay any mind at all to Rachel and try to moderate her words as she went on. “I’m telling you, it sounds about half crazy when you hear them talk about it, and then there he was telling us that the preacher—our preacher, mind you—was going to tell us how it was all true. That he’d had a vision. A vision of ruin, according to that Shaker boy. Something about the church falling down. That the roof was just going to fall down on top of all our heads or something foolish like that. Harold and the other men put that roof on over there.” She nodded toward the church building. “They built it sound.”
Sadie Rose stopped talking to breathe in and out a couple of times in an attempt to compose herself. “Anyway, Harold told me to come over here soon as I could get away from my chores to see if anything that Shaker boy said was true.”
“Maybe Deacon Crutcher needs to ask the preacher about that himself,” Lacey said as she rubbed her hand up and down Rachel’s back.
“Oh,
he will. Don’t you worry. But that Shaker boy said Harold wouldn’t find him today. That Brother Palmer was over visiting their place. Is that so?”
Lacey picked her words carefully. “I don’t know. The preacher doesn’t normally tell me where he’s going. But he has been talking some to them. I’m thinking everything that’s happened lately has put him under a strain.”
She didn’t know why she was trying to protect him. If he was having visions and going Shaker, it wouldn’t be secret long. Not secret like the way they were living. She thought about telling Miss Sadie Rose about that. That maybe it would make her not look so hard on the preacher, but then the woman would be back to looking hard on Lacey. Some messes didn’t allow for the first bit of untangling but just kept getting more knotted up.
Miss Sadie Rose stared at her with her mouth hanging open a minute as though Lacey had just confirmed all her fears. “Then don’t you think he ought to be talking to his Lord about his worries or maybe his deacons who’ve been worshiping faithful with him for more years than I like to number?”
Lacey didn’t have any answer for that, nor did Sadie Rose expect her to. They just sat there and looked at each other. Two women without answers. Lacey was used to the feeling. She hadn’t had answers for some time, but she could tell it was different for Miss Sadie Rose. She thought she already knew the answers. She wasn’t expecting the man she’d sat in church and listened to for years and years to suddenly be saying those answers might be wrong. That he was coming up with new answers that might shake the foundations of the church. Make the roof fall in on top of them all.
After a long minute, Miss Sadie Rose spoke again in a quiet little voice. “All right, Lacey. Answer me this. Do you think he’s considering what they’ve been telling him? Seriously considering it.”
Lacey couldn’t do anything but tell her the truth. “I’m thinking he might be.”
Sadie Rose twisted her mouth in concern. “To actually go live in their village?”
“I don’t know. He’s been pointing out to me the part of the Bible that says a man of God shouldn’t be married.”
Sadie Rose huffed a breath of air out her nose and stood up. “They don’t believe in families, you know. Divide a man and his wife. A mother and her children.” Her eyes fell on Rachel. “Of course that might not be such a problem for you with no borne children of your own. But it wouldn’t be a path I’d want Harold to follow the preacher on.”
“You think he might?” Lacey wrapped her arm tighter around Rachel as though to shut out Sadie Rose’s words denying the true connection between her and the child. Born to or not didn’t matter all that much.
“Men can get some strange ideas sometimes.”
“But over there they say it was a woman that started them. A woman that told them to live like that.”
“I’ve heard the same.” Sadie Rose’s face brightened at the thought. “Harold won’t go for that. No matter what the preacher might preach to him. Not that he should get his gospel from a woman. The Bible speaks strong against that.” She reached over, grabbed hold of Lacey’s hand, and squeezed it hard. “We’ll just have to pray about it. Pray for the preacher that he’ll come to his senses.”
Lacey looked up at the older woman and nodded. Wasn’t that what women were always left to do? Pray.
“Before Sunday,” Sadie Rose added as she lightly touched Rachel’s head and stepped past them toward the steps.
Lacey watched her until she was out of sight and then went back to cleaning the kitchen ceiling. Each time she dipped her cleaning rag back in the water and wrung it out, she said a silent prayer. Lord, watch over us. Me and Rachel and Miss Sadie Rose. And the preacher too. It didn’t seem right not to throw the preacher in there with them in her prayers. She thought about mentioning the Shaker men, but they were the ones causing the trouble. Then she knew it wasn’t just them. The trouble had been there in the house before they ever showed up with their seeds of discontent.
That night the preacher came home with a packet of butterbean seeds. That seemed proof that he’d been to the Shaker town to do some more talking, but at the same time he brought in the seeds. That had to mean he expected Lacey to plant them and watch them grow into the summer. He didn’t talk about it and she didn’t ask him.
But come Sunday morning, he did more than talk about it. He got right up in the pulpit and preached about it. He talked about that vision of the church falling down around them because they weren’t living right lives. Folks stirred a little in their pews with that, but it wasn’t uncommon for a preacher to talk about wrong living. Then he started talking about the Shakers and their Mother Ann being God’s daughter. Three families stood up and walked right out the back door without waiting for the final prayer. That just brought on more fervent preaching and dark warnings of condemnation.
Lacey sneaked a look over her shoulder to where Sadie Rose sat with her two youngest boys on the pew behind Lacey and then at Deacon Crutcher over on the men’s side of the church with the older boys. Lacey didn’t think Sadie Rose had to worry about the Shaker thinking cracking through the deacon’s stony face, and Lacey was glad that maybe her prayers for Sadie Rose had been answered the way Sadie Rose wanted.
Lacey turned back to look at Preacher Palmer. On the other hand, it didn’t look like she was ever going to pick the first butterbean off the plants from those seeds she and Rachel had put in the ground the day before.
12
“There’s no reason to delay when you see a thing needs doing. No, more than see it needs doing. When the Lord shows you in clear and certain ways that it must be done. A man sins who doesn’t obey his calling.” Preacher Palmer spoke the words with a surety, like he was declaring a truth anybody ought to understand.
He stared across the table at Lacey with a strange light in his eyes that she wanted to blame on the reflection of the oil lamp on the table between them, but some things were hard to pretend. She looked away from his face and stared at the kitchen window open to the night air. Moonlight flowed in it so bright that she could have gone out on the back porch, picked up her hoe, and gone to work in her garden. But if any of them came by, the church people would think she was crazy out there chopping in the moonlight.
Bad enough that they already thought the preacher had taken leave of his senses. The deacons had come to him one by one on Sunday afternoon after he’d preached about the Shakers’ perfect life. Then they’d all come together on Monday morning. Left their plows in the field on a sunny day and congregated to save their preacher. The Shaker brothers had been there on the porch standing beside the preacher when the deacons showed up. Brother Forrest and the young one Jacob along with an aged man they called Elder something. There was a lot of talk. Most of it not so pleasant. Lacey hadn’t even offered any of the men a drink. She didn’t have that many glasses.
Tuesday nobody had come knocking on the door. Nobody at all. That somehow seemed as strange as all the comings and goings the day before. And now the preacher was telling her they were going to the Shaker town. That he was giving up the church he and Miss Mona had started when they first came to these Kentucky woods. The church he’d let Miss Mona name.
Here I raise mine Ebenezer. Hither by thy help I’m come. Lacey could hear her singing the song about the fount of blessings and showing Lacey the chapter in Samuel where the prophet had placed a stone and called it the name of Ebenezer for how the Lord had chased off the Philistines with a great and mighty bang of thunder. The prophet Samuel’s Ebenezer stone in the Bible first. The Ebenezer church next. The Ebenezer community last.
Lacey didn’t say anything, even though the preacher had quit talking. It was like he was taking a pause in preaching, and it wouldn’t be right to interrupt his thinking. Besides, she didn’t have the first idea of what to say anyway. But he kept sitting there looking across the table at her until she knew he was waiting for her to say something, and the only word rising in her head was no. That was the word she should’ve said to him
some weeks back when he talked on how they had to get married.
More minutes crept by and she had to fight the temptation to leave this sorry moment behind and go off in her imagination to think up a story to make things better. To somehow change what was happening into a story with no more bothersome problem than getting past a snake on the porch step. That was the story she’d told Rachel the other day out on the back porch while the little girl was letting her latest fishing worm pet curl up in the palm of her hand.
Rachel liked something worrisome in her stories, and since her fondness for worms didn’t carry over to snakes, the mere thought of a snake in her path was plenty worrisome. But this snake had turned out to be the talking variety, although not the Garden of Eden trouble-making kind. Her story snake had been a right handsome fellow with black rings who had come very politely asking for help for his sister who’d fallen down in the well. In the story they’d gone right out to let the bucket down in the well so the sister snake could crawl in it and be pulled up to slither away with her brother.
Lacey mentally shook her head. It wasn’t a time to be fading out into the world of make-believe. Preacher Palmer wasn’t one to encourage flights of fancy. His dark eyebrows were almost meeting over his eyes as he stared at her.
“Well, aren’t you going to say anything, girl?”
Finally the word she wanted to say came out. “No.”
But of course her real meaning of it was lost from delaying so long. He just thought she wasn’t arguing against the move. And she supposed she wasn’t, seeing as how her words all seemed stuck in her throat. His eyebrows settled back in their proper places and he looked relieved.
“That’s how I thought your thinking would be,” he said. “Since you’ve been crossways with this union we might have entered in a bit too hastily for your peace of mind. The Shakers believe in a different sort of union. A union of peaceful living without the distractions of worldly living.”
The Blessed Page 12