The Blessed

by Ann H. Gabhart

  He understood the sorrow in that touch. He did miss opening a new book and the promise of the words it held. The only books Brother Verne allowed him to read were Shaker books. He had read the story of Mother Ann coming to America and of her visions of a perfect life apart from the world. He read the Shaker books of rules and the reasons for them. A Believer must avoid anything that might tempt him back to the worldly ways of selfish living and greed. Books of songs were plentiful, but reading the choruses tended to make Isaac’s eyelids droop.

  No books of adventure or derring-do were allowed. Except for the Bible where Isaac found stories of man’s struggle with sin in his quest for God. He read about Jacob’s flight from his brother Esau, and David fighting the giant. And then there were Joseph’s harrowing adventures after his dreams so raised the ire of his brothers that they sold him into slavery, where he went from slave to prisoner to keeper of the kingdom’s stores. The Lord’s plan with man’s detours.

  Isaac could see no plan of the Lord’s that had him in the Shaker village. No reason for him to be there other than hiding from the law. Brother Asa had assured Isaac that even that was no longer necessary. After his last trip to Louisville for more building materials for the West Family’s barn, Asa had cheerfully reported to Isaac that he was not a wanted man with leaflets carrying his description spread about the town. The man who had been stabbed on the riverfront had lived to point out his actual attacker. Isaac could return to the world. He could go wherever he wanted to begin his life again. As long as he stayed away from the judge’s town, he had little reason to worry about ending up in prison for a crime he didn’t do, the way Joseph in the Bible story had.

  Yet he stayed at the Shaker village even though it meant enduring Brother Verne’s sour humor and harping sermons during the day and being tormented by dreams at night that, unlike Joseph in the Bible, he had no idea how to interpret. His Ella dreams were often foggy and just beyond his recall, but he would wake from them with a beating heart and a terrible weight of guilt. He was the reason she was dead.

  You killed her. The judge’s accusing words rang in his head until Isaac wanted to bang his fists against his ears to block out the sound. Often in those dark moments on his narrow Shaker cot, Isaac recalled the pull of the water as he’d stood on the docks back in the spring and wondered if the Lord had favored him or cursed him with Brother Asa’s hand on his arm.

  Then to keep the darkness from overwhelming him, he’d turn his mind to other things. The tasks of the day behind him. The new novitiates that had appeared on the Shakers’ doorsteps. He’d think of the new sister with her brown eyes like his, though his were dark and hers seemed to have captured a flicker of sunlight. And he would wonder how she was adjusting to Shaker living.

  She was not Ella. She was nothing like Ella. Except for the sadness that hovered over her now when he spotted her in the dining room or along the walkways. Perhaps she had loved her home as much as Ella had. But he couldn’t believe she had loved the old man who had claimed her for a wife in the world. Brother Elwood.

  He slept in the same retiring room as Isaac. A long frame of a man who knelt by his bed and prayed so long in the morning upon rising that his Shaker guide had to touch him on the shoulder to stop the prayers so that their work could be accomplished. The man’s prayers were just as extended at night, and most of the brothers in the room were long asleep before the man began snoring.

  Toward the end of May, he and Brother Elwood shared the same duty of planting a late crop of corn. It was the first time they had worked together.

  Isaac was rolling a wheeled device the Shakers had invented to make seed planting go faster. Following behind it a man only had to press the dirt down over the seed with his foot and the planting was done. But there was need for more seed often as the workers moved down the long rows. Brother Elwood had been assigned the duty of carrying the seed. The heat of the sun and weight of the sack reddened his face until it looked as if his cheeks might spurt blood. Isaac offered to exchange tasks with him, but the man refused.

  “Nay, Elder Homer assigned this task to me. I will do it.” He had to stop to gather his breath.

  “They allow adjustments when one is unable to carry out the duties. Brother Verne has been given other duties today due to his ailing back.”

  “I am not ailing. I am able,” Brother Elwood said shortly. He set the sack of corn down on the dirt with a thump. “Fill your seeding wheel.”

  Isaac didn’t hurry as he filled the chambers on the wheel. He told himself he was being kind to his brother and giving him an extra moment of rest, but in truth he was curious about the man. And about his wife. Isaac looked to the side to see if any of the other brothers were near enough to hear before he asked, “How come you to join with the Shakers, Brother Elwood?”

  “I have always been one to search for the truth.” He did not look at Isaac, but kept his eyes on the sack of corn. “And what of you, Brother Isaac? Is that not why you came among these people as well? In search of the true way.”

  “Nay,” Isaac said. “I admit to being in need of food and shelter when Brother Asa came across me, and my feet fit well under the Shakers’ table.”

  Brother Elwood leveled a disgusted look at Isaac. “Such words sound sinful to my ears.”

  It was easy to imagine him in the pulpit calling down judgment on his wayward church members and just as hard to think of him and the young sister lying together. Isaac pushed that image from his mind and tried to move back to safer ground. A common ground that would take the fire from the man’s eyes. “I ask your forgiveness and will confess my wrong words to Brother Verne.”

  “Confession brings no forgiveness to an unrepentant heart.”

  “I feel great sorrow for my sins, but you are right that I have yet to find forgiveness.” Isaac looked straight at the older man. “Nor do I ever expect to find such. How about you? Have you never done anything that burned a hole in your heart like an ember of fire settled there that no amount of sorrow can extinguish?”

  “Nay,” the man said almost before Isaac got all the words out. “Nay,” he repeated even louder.

  Fire shot out of the man’s eyes, but Isaac didn’t back away from it. “Not even with the young sister?”

  Brother Elwood clenched his fists as his face twisted in anger. “Nay. She is the one who brought the sin down. Not I. I was about the Lord’s work.”

  “And now you gave that up, your calling to the Lord’s work, to come here.” Isaac didn’t know why he was tormenting the man with his words. It was like someone else had taken over his tongue. A chill moved through him. The Shakers claimed something the same happened to them in meeting when they spoke as if departed saints were controlling their mouths. Or angels. That was not happening to him. He wouldn’t let that happen to him. He was just there because his feet fit under their laden table.

  “I know you.” Brother Elwood’s eyes narrowed and his voice became icy. “You were the brother at my house who knew no discipline. The one Brother Verne speaks of as having a wayward spirit that works to bring disharmony among us. It is a fearsome thing to allow the devil to control your tongue.”

  “And what of you?” Isaac thought to clamp his mouth shut and go back to turning the wheel to plant the corn, but the words kept pushing out into the air. “You condemn Sister Lacey and not yourself?”

  “Sister Lacey?” A puzzled frown flashed across Brother Elwood’s face. “I have never done anything to Lacey. She has known only kindness under my roof.”

  “Brothers!” Sebastian, the brother in charge of their planting, walked up the row toward Isaac and Brother Elwood with fast, determined steps that made deep indentions in the soft ground. His forehead wrinkled in a worried frown as he spoke. “Such exchanges are not allowed, my brothers. Surely you have been told that such is not our way. Nor is the anger I note on your faces allowed among us as brothers. You must love your brother and have only good intentions one for another. We seek the gifts of peace and har
mony in all we do. Both of you must beg the other’s forgiveness.”

  It was a matter of a few words to restore the peace and harmony Brother Sebastian sought. At least the words satisfied Brother Sebastian and brought calm back to his face. The same could not be said for Brother Elwood, who continued to scowl every time he got close to Isaac the rest of the day. A scowl that found a twin on Brother Verne’s face the next morning when he caught up with Isaac as he was carrying the slops down from the sleeping rooms.

  “Brother Isaac.”

  Isaac knew as soon as he heard the man speak his name, he was in trouble, and the thought that a morning could actually get worse for a man carrying out slop buckets made a smile edge out on his lips. A smile that surprised him. It made him remember his father saying that when a man hit bottom, there was nothing for him to do but laugh at where he was while he tried to find a handhold to start the climb back up. He imagined telling his father that it was hard to start climbing with slop buckets in both hands and that made a laugh bubble up inside him. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt such an urge to laugh. To just sit down on the bottom step of the stairs and laugh until tears came to his eyes. Maybe before his father died. Certainly before Ella had.

  With the thought of Ella, the familiar sadness welled up inside him, but it didn’t completely push aside the desire to laugh. Perhaps he was losing his mind. Laughing when nothing was funny. But then in his haste to catch up with Isaac, Brother Verne tripped on the stairs and had to grab the railing to keep from tumbling into Isaac and his slops. The man ended up on his backside on the steps. That was funny. Isaac coughed to disguise the hiccup of a laugh he couldn’t swallow and turned away to keep the man from seeing him smile. It was a good feeling to smile.

  Brother Verne didn’t share in the good feeling. “Surely you do not laugh at the sight of your brother’s stumble.”

  “Nay.” Isaac bit his lip to hide any trace of the smile that still wanted to curl up his lips. He set the slops down and offered his hand to Brother Verne to help him up.

  Verne ignored his outstretched hand as he grabbed the railing to pull himself up to his feet. “Adding falsehood to your amusement at my misfortune only doubles your sin.” He brushed off his britches and straightened his suspenders.

  “Forgive my lacks.” Isaac didn’t feel the need for forgiveness, but he had no problem saying the expected words.

  The brother frowned at him. “Your lacks in proper behavior seem to increase daily.”

  “I will attempt to do better in the day ahead of us.”

  “It takes more than words, Brother Isaac. It takes a proper spirit of contrition, and that appears to be your biggest lack.”

  Every thought of laughter flew from Isaac’s mind. “Nay, that is not true. I carry much contrition in my heart.”

  “So you say. Again only words. Actions are what prove the words.”

  Isaac didn’t say anything more. Instead he bent his head and turned to pick up the slops to continue his morning’s duties. The breakfast bell would ring soon and the chores needed to be finished by then.

  “Wait, I am not through with you.” Brother Verne stayed on the steps.

  Isaac turned back to him. Suddenly he was very weary. Too weary to speak.

  While the Shaker man was not quite as tall as Isaac, now standing on the step enabled him to look down at Isaac. “It has come to my ears that you disrupted the harmony of the work in the cornfields yesterday.” Brother Verne’s face was dark with disapproval, but at the same time a glimmer of pleasure at catching Isaac in such wrong sparked in the man’s eyes.

  “I had plans to make confession of my transgressions this evening.”

  “Some confessions should not wait the scheduled hour.”

  “It appears they did not since Brother Sebastian reported my error to you already.”

  “Nay. It is Brother Elwood who spoke to me this day. He says you have sinful curiosity about his wife from the world.”

  “Sister Lacey?” Isaac set the slop buckets down again. “Why would he say that?”

  “Perhaps because it is true.” Brother Verne narrowed his eyes on Isaac.

  “Nay.”

  Brother Verne paid no attention to his denial. “Do you deny you have noted our new sister’s beauty?” He rushed on without waiting for Isaac to answer. “Any eye that is not blind can note that, but it is the beauty of the spirit that matters here in our village. Not beauty of the face. Purity is what we need. A man can’t give up his salvation because of the temptation of a pretty face. A man must carry his cross.”

  He paused to gather his breath, but Isaac stayed silent as he studied Brother Verne’s face. The man’s words carried too much passion. It was almost as if he was trying to convince someone besides Isaac. But no one else was on the steps. No one else in the hallway. Just Brother Verne preaching from the steps and Isaac listening.

  Upstairs a door opened and closed and footsteps whispered along the upstairs hallways toward the stairs. No doubt one of the sisters making sure not a speck of dirt escaped her broom so the good spirits Mother Ann claimed could not live where there was dirt would not desert their buildings. Nor could good spirits live in a heart that was weighted down with sin and temptation. Or with guilt and grief.

  “Well, what do you have to say for yourself, Brother Isaac?” Brother Verne finally asked.

  “I carry my burden,” Isaac said. “Every day.”

  “A burden of sin you do not wish to lay down. You cling to the worldly sins rather than pick up the cross of right living.”

  “And what of you, Brother Verne? Is your cross growing too heavy?” Isaac knew he should stop there from the storm that was gathering on Brother Verne’s face, but he did not. The same as in the cornfield when he’d spoken the words of conflict to Brother Elwood, his mouth seemed to form the words on its own and let them out into the air. “Your eye is not blind. Or do you have a beam in it while you are trying to get the speck out of mine? Perhaps you do not have the proper brotherly feelings toward the new sister yourself.”

  “Get thee from me, Satan.” Brother Verne pushed his hands out toward Isaac palm first. “Brother Elwood is right. You are allowing a wrong spirit to dwell in you.”

  “Can you say my words are wrong?” Isaac stared at him. “Without the sin of falsehood you accused me of earlier?”

  The tip of Brother Verne’s long nose turned as red as the skin stretched across his cheeks. “You have no right to accuse me of wrongdoing. You who cling to the world and cast lustful eyes on your sisters. You who spoil the harmony of our village. You who run after evil. You who . . .”

  Isaac picked up the slop buckets and ignored the brother’s accusing words that were spilling around him every bit as repulsive as the contents of the slops. A noise in the upper hallway drew his eye as he turned away from Brother Verne. The new sister, Lacey, had paused in the middle of her sweeping motion at the top of the sisters’ stairway. Isaac expected her to be upset, even frightened by Brother Verne’s vehement outpouring of condemning words, but she didn’t seem bothered. Far from it. With a smile, she leaned the broom handle against her shoulder and put both hands over her ears. Isaac was so surprised that he felt an answering smile want to slip across his own face, but he held it back until he went out the door. Brother Verne’s words followed him, but so did the new sister’s smile. The smile won.

  Elder Homer was waiting for Isaac when he carried the empty slops back into the house. Brother Verne was nowhere to be seen, but it was evident that he had reported Isaac’s impenitent spirit to the elder. Sister Lacey must have finished sweeping the stairs and taken her broom and smiles on to another task.

  “Come, Brother Isaac,” the elder said as the bell signaling the morning meal rang. “We will talk as we walk. Or I will talk and you will listen.”

  “Yea.” He stashed the empty slop pails under the stairs and followed the elder out the brethren’s door.

  “You have disturbed Brother Verne’s in
ner calm, and we feel it is better for you to stay away from him and not bother him with your words for a few days. Perhaps longer.” The elder looked over at Isaac. He didn’t appear to be angry. A bit weary perhaps, but his eyes remained kind. He pulled on his beard. “It is best if we do not let accusing words upset our harmony. Silence is often a virtue.”

  A virtue Isaac decided to practice. It would do little good to speak of Brother Verne’s angry words and accusations. He was a covenanted Believer. Isaac was a novitiate with no plan to join anything. He had no thought of achieving spiritual or physical purity. Not with what he’d done. His sole aim upon rising each morning from the Shaker bed was that of exchanging honest labor for meals and a bed. A meal it appeared he was going to miss this morn as they walked away from the eating room instead of toward it. So he kept his eyes on the ground in front of him and tried not to think of his empty stomach as he said, “Yea.”

  The elder walked on a few steps in silence as well. The village was quiet with all the brothers and sisters inside their family houses eating their biscuits and applesauce and eggs. There would be no bacon or ham since the New Lebanon ministry council had forbidden the eating of pork a few years back. What they decreed, every Shaker village practiced.

  “We are missing the morning meal,” the elder said as he turned back toward the Gathering Family House. “Not my intention, but a missed meal is better than a broken peace among our brothers. Do you not agree, Brother Isaac?”

  Isaac could not truthfully say he preferred peace with Brother Verne over breakfast, and while it hadn’t bothered him to lie to Brother Verne, he didn’t want to do so to Elder Homer. So he sidestepped the question and asked one of his own. “What would you have me to do, Elder?”

  “You avoid the question of peace, my brother.” The elder let out a small sigh as he ran his fingers through his beard again. “But perhaps in time you will be able to answer as you should. As for now, Brother Asa has spoken up for you. He has asked that you be allowed to work with him during this time of adjustment in your understanding of our ways. He came to me last week with this request.”