The Blessed

by Ann H. Gabhart

  “That’s our boy’s grave.” He pointed toward a new mound of dirt in the far corner of the graveyard.

  “Reuben told me. I’m sorry,” Lacey said. “Both of us are.” She held Rachel’s hand even tighter.

  “My Sadie Rose is taking it hard.” The creases in his weather-beaten face got deeper.

  “I guess that’s no wonder.” She wanted to say something to help him, but there were no words. “It’s a grievous thing for the both of you.”

  “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,” he said quietly before he turned his eyes away from his child’s grave back to her. “You planning on going back over there to that Shaker town?” He had his hat still in his hand from the funeral and he twisted the brim as he waited for her answer.

  “No. They work hard and there is kindness among them. Some good men and women, but I couldn’t wrap my mind around their peculiar way of worshiping. Or of dividing up families.” Rachel eased a little closer to her and Lacey put her arm around the child and let the thankful prayer that she could do so rise up in her heart yet again.

  “Then what are you thinking on doing?”

  “I don’t know.” She hadn’t really thought past the funeral. She looked over toward the preacher’s house where she’d known so many happy days, but she couldn’t expect them to let her stay there for long. They would need to move in a new preacher. “I don’t know,” she repeated.

  “I’d count it a favor if you’d come stay with us a spell. You know, just till Sadie Rose finds her strength again. Me and the boys, we need to be out in the fields. But it’s more than the chores. I’m thinking it might be good to have a woman in the house she could talk to.”

  “I have Rachel,” Lacey said.

  “I’m knowing that. I was meaning the both of you.” His eyes touched on Rachel. He tried to smile, but his eyes stayed sad. “It will be good to have a little girl in the house.”

  So after the grave was filled in and they ate with the good sound of the church people’s voices mixed with some laughter and a few tears, Lacey and Rachel climbed up on the seat of Deacon Crutcher’s wagon beside him. The boys piled in the back with the oldest boy, Harry, carefully holding the heaped-up plate of food the churchwomen fixed for his mother.

  “She won’t eat it,” Deacon Crutcher said with a nod back toward the boy. “She ain’t hardly ate a bite since before.”

  Lacey was quiet for a while as they rode along. Finally she said, “I might not be able to help her.”

  For a minute she wasn’t sure he’d heard her when he kept his eyes straight ahead on the road in front of them with his jaw clenched tight, but then he said, “That could be, but if it is, then at least we’ll have helped you. And the little girl. The Lord will honor that.”

  At the house, Lacey made Rachel wait on the settee in the front room while she went in to talk to Sadie Rose. It was the first time she hadn’t been touching the child since Aurelia put her hand in Lacey’s the day before at the Shaker village. Rachel looked ready to cry until the second youngest boy, Richard, sat down beside her and began telling her about catching crawdads in the creek out behind the house. Richard was like his mother. Or at least like his mother had been before. Lacey didn’t know how she would be now.

  She tapped lightly on the bedroom door and listened for a response but heard nothing. She hesitated a moment before she pushed open the door. The room was dark with heavy curtains pulled tight closed over the one window. Lacey stood still inside the door to let her eyes adjust to the dimness. “Miss Sadie Rose,” she said softly. The woman was on the bed, covered with a quilt that had to be bringing out the sweat in the stuffy room. “You awake?”

  Sadie Rose answered without lifting her head to look around. “I’m not up to talking to anybody today. The boys should have told you that.”

  Lacey ignored her words and walked over to the bed. She sat down right beside her. “It’s me, Sadie Rose. I’ve come to stay with you a spell, seeing as how I don’t have anywhere else to go. I hope you won’t be upset with Deacon Crutcher for offering to take us in.” She laid her hand on the woman’s shoulder.

  “Lacey, is that really you?” She shifted under the quilt and turned toward Lacey.

  Lacey wished she’d gone over and pulled back the curtains so she could see the woman’s face better. But maybe it wouldn’t matter. Maybe the Lord would still put the right words in her mouth to offer the beginnings of comfort. “It’s me. You knew the preacher died, didn’t you?”

  “Harold told me.” The silence built in the room for a moment before she went on in a flat voice. “You heard about Jimmy.”

  “Reuben carried the news to me. I’m sorry.”

  “Sometimes I think my heart has withered up. I can’t even cry anymore and he was my baby. A mother ought to cry for her baby, but I’m all dry ash inside. There’s nothing left.”

  “No mother could love her baby any more than you loved Jimmy,” Lacey said.

  “Loving him didn’t keep him from dying.”

  “I know. I’m sorry,” Lacey said again. Useless words in the face of Sadie Rose’s grief. If only she could call down Miss Mona to talk through her the way Aurelia said her angels spoke through her. But she couldn’t. All she could do was keep her hand firm on Sadie Rose’s shoulder and hurt with the woman.

  Lacey had no idea how many minutes had ticked past when Sadie Rose said, “What about the Shaker village?” She turned her head to look at Lacey.

  “It wasn’t the right place for the preacher. Or for me.”

  “I should have gone. Me and Harold should have packed up and gone with Brother Palmer. We should have.”

  Lacey frowned. “Why would you think such a thing?”

  “Don’t you see? If I had gone with the preacher, Jimmy would still be alive. He wouldn’t have got on that horse.” Sadie Rose shifted uneasily in the bed and grabbed Lacey’s hand. “Maybe that was how God punished my unbending spirit. I was too proud of what I believed and not willing to listen to what the Lord could have been telling me through the preacher.”

  “But the preacher died there when he might not have if he hadn’t gone to the Shakers.” Lacey squeezed her hand. “Bad things happen. Everywhere.”

  “That’s what Harold tells me.”

  “But you don’t believe it?”

  Lacey thought Sadie Rose was going to turn her face back to the wall and not answer. In her mind Lacey whispered the silent prayer, Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. She wanted comfort for Sadie Rose. She wanted her to feel blessed even in the midst of sorrow. Blessed the way Lacey had told Aurelia she was. Even if Rachel had not come away from the Shaker village with her. Even if she never knew the kind of love that Isaac had known for his wife and that had seemed to be awakening between them. Even if she had to live dependent on others’ charity forevermore, still she was blessed. Miss Mona had always told her that the Lord loved her. That he would put joy and belief in her heart if she would just let him. And now she’d let him.

  “I’ve always believed,” Sadie Rose finally whispered. “Always. Since before I can remember. But now I see nothing but darkness. I lay here and think about Mona and what she would say if she was here. She’d be ashamed of my weakness. I’m ashamed of my weakness.”

  “No, she’d grieve with you and maybe read the Bible to you. She’d show you where it says we are weak but he is strong.”

  “That’s in Corinthians. I’ve shown that very verse to others in despair, never thinking I’d fall into the same despair myself some day.” Sadie Rose clung to Lacey’s hand as she raised her head up off the pillow. “What’s another one she would tell me?”

  Lacey shut her eyes and the verse came to her. From where she didn’t know. “The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart.”

  “She’d tell me that. I can almost hear her voice right in here with us.” She shoved the quilt back and pushed herself up to a sitting position against the headboard of the bed. “I’m glad you’re
here, Lacey. There’s been times our spirits have been at odds, but could be the Lord set you down in this place for a reason. First Mona, then Rachel, and now me.”

  “I should have done more to help the preacher.”

  “What should you have done?”

  “Loved him as a wife should.”

  “Love’s not some kind of stew you can stir up on the stove anytime you want. It was wrong for Preacher Palmer to put you in the spot he put you in. Wrong of me and the other women too. But the good Lord knows we all fall short some of the time in doing what we ought.” Sadie Rose clutched Lacey’s hand. Then she looked toward the bedroom door. “Is Rachel with you? I want to see her.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I am.”

  “Then I’ll have to open the curtains a little. The dark might frighten her.”

  “If you have to.” She put her arm over her eyes as Lacey pulled back the curtains.

  Rachel didn’t seem frightened at all by Sadie Rose propped up in the bed. She ran straight to her and crawled up beside her. “Richard said Jimmy died. Like Papa died.”

  “He did.”

  “I wish he hadn’t.”

  “I know.” Sadie Rose put her arm around Rachel and the little girl snuggled down against her chest. “I know.” Tears leaked out of Sadie Rose’s eyes.

  After a minute Rachel peeked up at Sadie Rose. “They took Maddie away from me. Do you think you could make another Maddie for me?”

  “Rachel, now might not be—” Lacey started.

  Sadie Rose stopped her. “Let me and Rachel work this out, Lacey.” The woman actually smiled as she wiped the tears off her cheeks. “You know what, Rachel. I do think I can. I’ll find me some material and go to work on it first thing in the morning.”

  Satisfied, Rachel put her head back down on Sadie Rose’s chest. “I saw Jimmy’s grave. It looked like Papa’s. But Lacey says they’ll both have dandelions on them just like Mama Mona’s. And then we can do the dandelion dance again.”

  “The dandelion dance?” Sadie Rose looked down at the top of Rachel’s head. “I don’t think I know how to do that.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll teach you,” Rachel said. “Like Lacey taught me.”

  34

  The sight of Brother Elwood jerking his arm free from Isaac’s hand and sliding off the roof haunted Isaac. The image was burnt upon his mind.

  Why couldn’t he keep people from dying? His father. Ella. And now this man. He hadn’t cared about this man. This Shaker brother. He’d barely known him. And yet the guilt was still there. Because of Lacey.

  He hadn’t turned him loose. It didn’t matter that the thought of Lacey being free had swept through his mind while they were on the roof. He hadn’t turned the man’s arm loose. He hadn’t. He told himself that a hundred times a day. At the same time he couldn’t help wondering if maybe he could have held just a little tighter. Maybe he could have somehow made a better effort to grab the man with his other hand. And kept him from falling.

  They hadn’t let him talk to Lacey afterward. Brother Forrest and Brother William had pulled him back to safety. Barely catching Isaac’s legs before the railing gave completely away. They had hustled him away from the brother’s broken body and from Lacey.

  A good ways down the road, a group of Shakers had been coming up from the Feast Day holy ground to deal with the tragedy. But there were no sisters yet there and Lacey had stood isolated and alone as she stared down at Brother Elwood’s body. Then she stepped back and looked toward him. The cap kept her face shadowed so he couldn’t tell what she was thinking. Sorrow or anger? Despair or relief?

  Not relief. She was too decent to think that. Even if she hadn’t loved the man. She had been prepared to lead him back to the world. To be his wife again. That’s what Isaac needed to remember no matter how much he wanted to follow the wagon carrying her and her dead husband’s body away from the Shaker village. He couldn’t run after a man’s wife when that man’s body wasn’t even cold to the touch. When that man might have lived if Isaac had only gripped his arm a little tighter.

  In the days that followed, Brother Asa said it was good that Lacey was gone from the village. That it was the Lord removing a stumbling block from Isaac’s path.

  “By letting a man die?” Isaac asked.

  “Nay. The Lord had naught to do with Brother Elwood’s tormented mind.” Brother Asa looked up at Isaac from the fence they were mending in the pasture field. “That had more to do with the devil.”

  “And was it the devil that kept me from being able to hold him?” Isaac held the plank in place and waited for Asa to hammer in the nails to secure it to the post.

  But Asa straightened up to look Isaac in the face instead. “I sometimes fear that you are letting poor Brother Elwood’s torment awaken in your mind, my brother. You have told me what happened. Brother Forrest and Brother William have told me of how near you came to following the man in death while you tried to pull him back from the edge. You did no wrong.”

  “I might have held tighter.”

  “And he might have not climbed to the roof to look for harmony with the spirits. A harmony he could have found in better ways. Such ways were freely available at the feast. Didn’t you tell me you were feeling a peaceful forgiveness before Brother Elwood ruined the day?” Asa leaned down and hammered the nails with sure strokes to hold the plank in place. When he was finished, he stood up and lightly poked Isaac’s chest with the hammer head. “Do not invite the devil to put doubts in your heart where belief is trying to grow.”

  Isaac looked off toward the woods where Lacey had led him to the cow. The calf was over behind him in the pasture, running and jumping. Alive because of Lacey. And what was he? Alive to the world or dead to the world?

  “I want to go after her,” he said. It was the time for truth between them.

  “Nay,” Brother Asa said, his voice distressed. “You want to jump too fast from one thing to another, my brother. It has only been a few weeks. Give yourself until the end of the hot weather.”

  “But what if she marries someone else?”

  “Then you can rejoice in being saved from the sin of matrimony.” He reached down to lift up the next fence plank and hammer it in place with firm strokes.

  They didn’t speak of it again. Isaac had not spoken any words of promise aloud, but somehow they both knew the pledge had been made. Till the end of the hot weather.

  The first week in July a new preacher moved into the house by the church. Reverend Holman. Reverend Seth Holman. He wasn’t married, which had made for questions in the church house and much talk out in the yard. Some thought a preacher needed to be married. Others said it didn’t matter. Still others among the women eyed the new preacher and then let their eyes linger on Lacey. They felt it was somehow ordained. Not right away. Decency demanded a grieving period for Lacey even if she hadn’t worn black but three Sundays before shedding the mourning garb.

  Sadie Rose didn’t care what she wore. She had gotten out of her bed and took up her sewing basket the first week Lacey and Rachel were there. After she made the Maddie doll, she stitched a mourning dress for Lacey to wear to church, but when Lacey told her she couldn’t bear putting it on again, Sadie Rose hadn’t said a word. She just found some rose-colored material and made a new dress for Lacey before the next Sunday.

  As the weeks passed, Sadie Rose slowly picked up her load as mother and wife again, but she wasn’t the same woman as before. That was how she and the Deacon Crutcher always spoke of little Jimmy’s passing. What was before and what was after.

  Before she’d had surety about what was right, she told Lacey. But now she couldn’t say for sure about the right or wrong of what anybody did. She didn’t entertain such questions, and if anybody from the church came carrying a bit of gossip or complaint, she’d just look off into the distance until the other woman’s voice would sink to a whisper and then fade completely away. Then after a minute of uneasy silence on the part of the visitor, Sa
die Rose would tell Lacey to go get them some tea.

  The only time she smiled was when Rachel sat next to her and played with her Maddie doll, acting out the silly stories Lacey told her. And when the boys came in from the field and hugged her neck. Every time they came in the house, all four of those boys lined up to hug her neck. Even the gangly Harry who was going on seventeen. A good draught of medicine for the heart. The morning Lacey saw Sadie Rose reach for Deacon Crutcher’s hand as they walked out of the church after a Sunday morning sermon, she knew Sadie Rose was back to coping with life.

  The churchwomen must have been seeing the same thing, because they started fretting over Lacey and what was to become of her. Sadie Rose told her not to worry her head over it. That she had a home with them forever. But the churchwomen thought a few months might be forever enough. And when Reverend Holman moved in the preacher’s house and didn’t have the first person to take care of him, it wasn’t two Sundays until the churchwomen had figured out the solution to both problems. Lacey needing a home and the reverend needing a housekeeper.

  It didn’t help that Reverend Holman had looked at Lacey wearing her new rose dress that first Sunday he stood in the pulpit and decided the very same thing. Or that Lacey had looked at the reverend and not thought about him one time the way the churchwomen were hoping. He wasn’t a bad-looking man in spite of the fact that his nose was a little large for his face and his eyes had a droop that made him look sad even when he was smiling. He did have a booming preacher voice that filled up the church building when he was reading the Scripture, but he was a little man. Not an inch taller than Lacey. Not someone who could lift her up and swing her around no matter how joyful the moment might be.

  She tried not to think about Isaac, but she might as well have tried not to breathe. She kept seeing him up on the roof hanging on to Preacher Palmer. Doing what he could to save him with little regard for his own safety. She kept seeing his face when he’d come down afterward. The sadness so plain there for a man he barely knew. Then to turn her thoughts away from that sorrow, Lacey would think about the little cow having the calf. And life.