“Surely it would be a sin to do less than our best as we work to honor the Eternal Father,” Brother Asa had told Isaac last week when they first started working together in the barns. “Mother Ann instructs us to do our work as if we had a thousand years to live, and as if we might die tomorrow.”
“A thousand years?” Isaac protested Brother Asa’s words. “Nobody can live a thousand years. Some people don’t even live twenty-five years.” A vision of Ella’s face frozen forever in death pushed into Isaac’s thoughts.
“Yea, you are right. Nor do the most of us expect to die on the morrow,” Brother Asa agreed amiably. “But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work with careful, dedicated hands and minds to finish our tasks in a timely manner. Will your contrary spirit argue with that?”
Isaac had looked up from the clean straw he was scattering in the barn stall with worry that he might see the same shadow of displeasure on Brother Asa’s face that so often darkened Brother Verne’s whenever he tried to pull Isaac along the Shaker way. But no frown lines marked Asa’s face. He seemed to look on Isaac’s contrariness as no bigger problem than the horsefly buzzing around his head that he easily waved aside.
“Nay.” The Shaker word spilled naturally out of Isaac’s mouth after his weeks of practice. He picked up more straw with his pitchfork. “I can find no reason to argue that.”
“Then see, that is one foot set upon the path of a Believer. The hands to work. Now to give your heart to God.”
“What gives you reason to think I haven’t?” Isaac straightened up and looked out of the stall at Asa. The little man had yet to go off to wield his own pitchfork but instead was watching to be sure Isaac knew how to properly muck out a stall the Shaker way.
“Have you? As a Believer?” Brother Asa peered at Isaac’s face. “If that is so, I should be talking to you about signing the Covenant.”
Elder Homer had told Isaac about the Covenant. A confession of faith and an agreement to abide by the Believers’ rules. Isaac couldn’t do the confessing or the agreeing. Brother Asa was right. His spirit was too contrary.
“Nay, not yet.” Isaac bent back to his work of evenly scattering the clean straw before he stepped out of the stall.
“I thought not,” Asa said.
“I’d like to believe.” Isaac opened the door of the next stall and the odor of fresh horse droppings and urine rushed out to him.
“I can see that you speak from your heart, but I hear in your voice that you think belief will be too hard. That believing will be an onerous duty, when in truth it will lift you up and make you feel light as a bird taking wing with the wind and using no effort at all.”
The little Shaker man leaned his pitchfork against the wall and waved his hands up and down almost as though he thought he might lift up off the barn floor. Isaac wouldn’t have been too surprised if he had. At the same time his own feet grew so heavy that it was all he could do to step into the stall and begin turning the straw. No birds were taking wing in his spirit.
When Isaac didn’t say anything, Brother Asa let a sigh whisper out of his mouth. Not a sound he made often. Isaac kept his eyes on the straw in the stall. He didn’t want to see disappointment with his contrariness on his friend’s face.
But then Brother Asa suddenly slapped his hands together. “But enough of sermons for this day. Another thing that our Mother Ann said was that none preaches better than the ant and it says nothing at all. So today I will be an ant and teach you through my faithful performance of my duties.”
“But there is more than work. There is also worship.”
“Yea, we do go forth in exercises at our meetings to strengthen our spirits, but the work of our hands, that is worship just as much. Even more.”
Isaac shook off a fork full of soiled straw into the wheelbarrow outside the stall.
Brother Asa looked up at him and laughed. “If you could see your face, Brother. What is it that confounds you so?”
“It’s hard for me to think about cleaning horse apples out of a stall as worship. I thought you had to be in church for that or reading the Bible or praying maybe.”
“Nay, nay, the best worship is that done with your hands.” Asa held up his hands and then reached for his pitchfork. “Even the sort of thing you are thinking of as worship—the world’s idea of worship—can happen anywhere. Such holy moments don’t only occur in a church or meetinghouse. Think of the Christ who had many holy moments along his road of life as he helped those he met.”
“As you helped me,” Isaac said. “Pulling me back from the river’s edge. I wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t seen me there in the fog that morning.”
“That could be true or not. The good Lord might have sent you another helper if I had refused his leading that morn. But we are duty-bound to do good if we can.”
“I am glad to be alive,” Isaac said.
“Yea, a day such as today can bring that joy to one’s heart. So perhaps your heart is ripe and ready to be harvested for our Eternal Father.” Brother Asa must have seen the doubt on Isaac’s face, for he smiled a little as he went on. “Our holy Feast Day is coming when we will march out to our Chosen Land to feast on love and gifts of the spirit. Many hearts are altered at our feasts. Yours could be one of those.”
“Chosen Land? Where’s that?” Isaac began sifting through the muck in the stall to dip out the rest of the horse’s leavings.
“Not far from here. A spiritual place of angels. With a fountain stone where the Believer can wash in heavenly waters and be cleansed.”
Isaac frowned at Asa. “There’s a fountain of water there? You mean a spring?”
“Nay, a spiritual fountain. A fountain of holy water visible to those with pure hearts. But any who are unworthy or have unconfessed sins should not wash in the waters.”
“What happens if they do?”
“Some things are best not tested.” Brother Asa’s voice was grave and full of warning.
“You don’t have to worry about me. I won’t be dipping into any spiritual water.”
“In time you may have a clean spirit and a heart made ready by belief and confession. Once you sign the Covenant.”
Isaac had turned back to his task of cleaning out the stall. That he could clean. His spirit was a different matter.
Now with the holy feast only days away, Isaac could see the excitement build among the Believers. Excitement Isaac couldn’t really understand. It all sounded too strange. Holy fountains with spiritual water. A place searched out and prepared by specially chosen instruments under the guidance of angels. Feasting on nothing but spiritual food. He had pantomimed eating a few invisible apples that sisters at the meetings were wont to pretend picking and passing around in baskets. That had been odd enough, but to plan a whole feast of imaginary food seemed the next thing to lunacy to Isaac.
He’d watched the Shakers come under operations. He’d seen them shaking and dancing and stomping. He’d heard those claiming to be instruments deliver messages from some long-dead person or an angel the way Sister Aurelia had done at the last meeting. And although he never spoke it aloud, he didn’t believe any of it was holy.
But then perhaps he didn’t recognize holy because he had never reached for such in his own life. His mother had. Mrs. McElroy had. Even Ella had, begging him to attend church with her at the fort before the fever came on her.
He wondered what Ella would think of the Shakers. She might like Brother Asa. She’d be nervous around Elder Homer in spite of his peaceful countenance. But men like Brother Verne with his dark frowns and piercing eyes would send her into panic. One peek at the glowering Shaker would have sent her running to hide behind her father.
It could be she should have taken one look at Isaac and run to her father. From the first day of their marriage she had seemed to look backward with regret for what she’d left behind. Isaac’s love hadn’t been enough to wrest her away from her father. Not truly. Now even in death Isaac thought of her belonging with the judge and h
er mother and not with him. Perhaps if they had been married longer. Perhaps if he could have changed and surrendered his dream of adventure and lived the life she’d wanted, he might have taken over first place in her life in time. Perhaps.
A man could drive himself crazy thinking about perhaps. There was no perhaps when it came to death. Ella was dead. Nothing would ever change that.
But other things did change. He changed. Winter gave way to spring, and with the change of the seasons, he couldn’t deny that he was ready to put his grief behind him. To start living again and let spring awaken in his heart once more. He was shamed by that. Ella had only been gone seven months. But grief could lengthen the days into weeks and the weeks into years.
He had no right to do so, but he was turning Ella loose. He could no longer recall the scent of her perfume. He no longer felt the sharp stab of pain when he thought about taking the combs from her silky dark hair to let it fall down around her shoulders. Instead there was only the kind of lingering sadness he felt when he thought about his father dead these many years.
Brother Asa told Isaac it was good that he was forgetting Ella and his sinful bonds of marriage. He need never entertain the errant thought of a wife again. All women were sisters to him. Including the one named Lacey.
Asa didn’t mention her by name. While Asa had voiced his suspicions of Isaac gazing wantonly on the new sister when she fell against him at the meeting, he had not continued to poke at Isaac’s denial of sin to see if he could find a soft spot of untruth. Unlike Brother Verne who kept watching Isaac with hooded eyes of suspicion. Eyes that were more able to note that sin because he had looked at Lacey with other than a brother’s eyes himself. Brother Asa knew nothing of the power of that temptation. He was every inch a Believer. A brother to all.
Even to poor Brother Elwood, who appeared ready to escape reason at any moment and chase after the balance he claimed the spirits were ordering him to find. As if walking along a fence rail could give him spiritual peace. So perhaps he too was tormented by the new sister who had been his wife in the world. Or by the message of Sister Aurelia’s angel who had shouted out words of sin at Lacey. Maybe he’d felt those words bouncing off her toward him as her sinful husband. Condemnation that as a preacher he might never have known in the world.
There he was the one holding the holy book. The one interpreting the message for his people. And now he was only another of the novitiate brothers trying to shake off lustful sins of the world. Isaac had seen him shaking. Intently serious. Not as a mere exercise to satisfy those watching, as Isaac sometimes shook his hands at his side.
Unlike Isaac, Brother Elwood earnestly sought the Shaker belief. Even after weeks with them, the only part of the Shaker life that called to Isaac was their laden tables of food in the eating room. He had come to hide among the living dead, but he knew now he would not stay in their village forever.
He might have already gone if not for Brother Asa. And the new sister. He shook away that last thought. Nothing but trouble lay in that direction. It was best not to wonder what had made her smile so completely vanish this morning. Better to think about his work duties and find the missing heifer ready to calve.
“She may have wandered into the woods in search of a spot of solitude for calving,” Brother Asa told Isaac as he handed him a coiled rope. “Here, you may need this. It’s the young heifer’s first calf. I had thought to put her in the small pasture the end of this week where there are no trees for hiding, but it could be we miscalculated her time. You’d best search her out.”
The sun, hot for late May, beat down out of the cloudless sky on Isaac as he crossed the pasture field, counting the cows grazing there. Still one short. The heifer hadn’t come back to the herd. He’d done plenty of cow hunting while working for the McElroys. Those cows, scrawny stock compared to that of the Shakers, were prone to wander far afield in search of better pasture.
The herd bull the Shakers imported from England was the difference, according to Asa. “Whichever brother picked the name ‘Shaker’ for him must have had a bit of a sense of humor, don’t you think?” he had told Isaac with a smile spread across his face. “Considering the animal’s purpose. But old Shaker has made our cows throw some mighty fine calves.”
Isaac stepped into the deep shade of the woods, took off his hat, and wiped the sweat off his brow. With no Shaker brother around to upbraid him, he didn’t bother shoving the hat back on his head as he moved through the trees, keeping an eye out for cow signs. Squirrels chattered at him overhead, and he spotted the bushy tail of a fox slipping out of sight behind some trees. He needed a dog. A good herd dog could make the search easier, but that was something the Shakers didn’t keep. No dogs. No cats either.
“A Believer has no need of pets,” Brother Asa had told Isaac. “An animal has to earn his keep. Like the cows and the horses.”
“Dogs could help with the herding of the cattle and cats keep down the mice.”
“It is not our way to turn the violence of one animal on another.”
“But how do you keep the mice from eating up your corn?” The McElroys had several cats to keep the mice out of their barn.
“We have traps for the mice.”
“Seems it would be better to let the cats kill them for food than to do it with a trap.”
“Nay, you don’t understand. Our traps are not lethal. One of our brothers made them so we can capture the mice to turn them loose far from the barns.”
Such a strange people, Isaac thought as he made his way between the trees. Not wanting to pet a dog on one hand and not killing a mouse on the other. Claiming peace while warring with the natural impulses of life. Shouting and dancing in worship. Not saying a word during meals or prayers. Planning to the point of excited frenzy to have a pretend feast and to take a pretend bath in a pretend fountain.
The rustle of a bush caught Isaac’s ear and he stood still to listen. At first he thought he might have come up on the missing cow, but then he caught sight of a white cap. A sister out in the woods. Probably gathering roots for their potions. Isaac stepped off the path behind a tree to keep from startling the sister. Or sisters. She wouldn’t be in the woods alone. He peered around the tree but saw only the one cap coming through the trees. She had her head bent, watching her step, but then she stopped and looked up to get her bearings. The new sister. Lacey.
He stepped back up on the path and waited for her to spot him. Perhaps Elder Homer would not consider it too great a sin for Isaac to ask the sister if she’d seen the lost cow. Or if she herself was lost. It would surely be wrong not to offer help to a lost sister.
26
A cloud hung over Lacey the morning after her visit with Rachel. No matter how much she told herself Rachel was just angry at her for deserting her to the Shakers and that love remained underneath the anger, Lacey’s heart broke a little more every time she heard the echo of Rachel’s words. Sister Rella loves me more.
Who was this Sister Rella? Lacey tried to recall every word Rachel had said about the sister who came to her in the night. One minute Lacey would be sure there was no real Sister Rella. The next she wanted to guard Rachel’s retiring room door to watch for the woman who was whispering lies in Rachel’s ears.
The few times Lacey had fallen into a fitful sleep the night before, she was beset with nightmares of sisters surrounding her bed, taunting her. In her dreams, when she tried to rise up off her pillow to see who the sisters were, hands pushed her down as they intoned the word “woe,” just as she’d heard it at the meeting after she’d knocked poor Isaac off his feet. She tried to peer at their faces, to know who they were, but she could see nothing but dark shadows under their caps.
The morning bell had rescued her from the nightmare sisters. She had risen and knelt by her bed to pray as was required. Blessed are the meek. The words came to her mind, but they were no help. She didn’t want to be meek. She wanted Rachel. Blessed are the merciful; for they shall obtain mercy. Maybe that was the Beatitud
e she needed to let rest in her mind.
But she wasn’t feeling merciful or meek or pure in heart or like a peacemaker. Poor in spirit. That sounded right. What was it the poor in spirit were promised? The kingdom in heaven. Lacey had never understood why being poor in spirit should get a body anything. Miss Mona had been some puzzled by that one too but had ended up telling Lacey she supposed the Lord didn’t want anybody to get all puffed up and proud of how fine they were for believing.
For certain, Lacey wasn’t puffed up with believing anything as she bent her head over her clasped hands resting on her narrow Shaker bed. She was poor in spirit on this morning. Did that mean there was no chance of her finding happiness this side of heaven? She tried to reach for some prayer words. Our Father in heaven. Then nothing came to mind except Rachel. Rachel turning away from her.
She was glad when Sister Drayma shook her shoulder to let her know prayer time was over. She couldn’t stay on her knees praying this or that blessed all day. She had to stand up and put on her Shaker dress. She had to take the broom and sweep out the retiring rooms the same as every morning she’d been in the village. She moved by rote and without any awareness of the sun rising in the east.
The morning meal was no better. The faces around her all kept chewing, lost in their silent thoughts. Perhaps thinking of no more than whether the eggs were cooked the way they liked them or of how sweet the new jam was from the berries just picked. Or perhaps like Sister Drayma with their eyes casting about for some wrong to note. Or like Lacey with too much sorrow in their hearts to speak even if no rules of silence were in place in the eating room. Lacey slid her eyes past the ones who looked as sorrowful as she felt. Blessed are the poor in spirit, she repeated in her head as she stared down at the biscuit on her plate. In time they would all be happy in heaven. As happy as she’d been the day before when she was looking forward to seeing Rachel. But the happiness in heaven would endure. Strange, unknown sisters wouldn’t steal it away.
The Blessed Page 26