Fitcher's Brides

by Gregory Frost

  Amy had thought that what the house lacked so far was mostly character: The walls were bare, the floors bare, the rooms stripped of any hint of the former occupants. Now she discovered that its character had been put into storage in the cramped little attic.

  The low ceiling sloped sharply toward the rear, ending perhaps two feet above the floor. The bricks of the fireplace chimneys intruded into the middle. To either side of them, all manner of furnishings had been crammed. Kate and Vern were seated on a big mahogany sofa with a serpentine back, which had been dragged out from under the low ceiling. There were more stenciled Hitchcock chairs identical in design to the one below, a shell cabinet, cast-iron fenders for one of the hearths, lamps, a mahogany dresser with lots of scroll and foliage work carved into it and a swivel mirror on side pins at the back, and another chair that she quickly identified as a Boston rocker. On the dresser stood an eight-day clock. Her sisters held a frame between them and were looking at it. As Amy stepped from the stairs, Vern turned it around to show her. She said, “Oh, my,” and drew closer, finally taking her place on the sofa beside her sisters. “Is that one of those—”

  “Daguerreotypes. Yes, it is,” said Vern.

  They had seen a few of these in Boston, but never expected to encounter something so novel here. Daguerreotypes had only existed for a few years, and almost the only people who had them were well-to-do. At one time or another they had all wished they had a family portrait of their own like this, one that included their mother.

  The young couple in this one looked stiff and nervous, intimidated no doubt by the camera itself if not by the interminable time they had to sit rigid in their finery. The man wore a tight-fitting tweed suit. His dark hair was slicked down and one front lock curved across his forehead; his short beard had been trimmed and waxed, his great mustaches sweeping like steer horns to either side of his mouth. He sat upon one of the chairs stored here. He was looking toward his wife. She stood beside him, in a half profile as if her attention had been distracted by something off to the side. Her hair was coiled about her head with little sausage curls in the front. Her dress had puffed sleeves with frilled epaulettes. The only flaw in the picture was a blur at the bottom of the woman’s skirt, as if she had shifted her feet, although fortunately the rest of her body hadn’t moved. Amy wondered, was that even possible? Could she move her feet and hold her body still? She wasn’t too sure. “Were they the Pulaskis, do you s’pose?” she asked.

  “No way to tell, there’s nothing written on the back. Unless maybe that stevedore would know ’em. But when do you think this was taken? I can’t believe they can have these a way out here.”

  “Vern, you cap the climax,” Kate observed of her sister’s snobbery, and getting up from the sofa, she walked around the furniture. “We’ll have plenty of things to sit on, least ways.”

  “Are we going to entertain?”

  “We won’t find any husbands if we don’t,” Kate replied, but idly, as if it really didn’t concern her—which was probably true, Amy thought, seeing as how Kate was third in line for marriage, and only sixteen. What could the notion of marriage mean to her? Amy had no clear sense of it herself, except that she was supposed to want it, it was what everything came to, what duty to her father and family was supposed to require. Still, she couldn’t imagine the three of them ever being separated. They never had been. They were a family and this was to be their family home. Besides, there likely wouldn’t be time for them to marry now. Not before the world came to its appointed end. Even if they met someone tomorrow, there wouldn’t be enough time for them to have a baby or make a new home before they were judged.

  “We’ll be going to Harbinger House,” announced Vern, “as soon as everything is arrived and uncrated. Papa says we’re not an hour from it on foot.”

  “He’s going to be in charge of the pike, isn’t he?” said Amy. “That’s why we’re in this house. I wonder what’s in that letter.”

  “I expect the letter’s from the Reverend Fitcher, probably our invitation to Harbinger, to meet them,” Vern answered.

  But Amy had fixed upon the notion of Judgment Day and could not be directed to another topic. “When the seals are broken and the skies roll back,” she recited, “the Lord God will come to judge us all.”

  Vern nodded. “And it’ll be those who stand with the Reverend Fitcher who are preserved and made glorious in Heaven.”

  Kate looked on in silence. Something in her attitude led Amy to the conclusion that she secretly discredited these words. She said, “You don’t want to be cast into the pit, do you, Kate?”

  Amy’s obsession included the more infernal images of Judgment: seven-eyed beasts with seven heads, plagues, locusts, the demons of Abaddon. Despite repeated assurances from her father and sisters, she doubted her worthiness to enter Heaven, suspecting that some corruption lurked in the depths of her soul. Even if she couldn’t identify it, certainly God would.

  “No, I don’t,” Kate replied, as though it wasn’t a possibility and thus of no concern.

  Amy turned to her older sister. “But how will I be any different at Harbinger than I am here, Vern? When the day comes—in the eyes of God I’m me wherever I am.”

  Vern sighed. It was an old conversation. “The Reverend Fitcher will advocate for you, for all of us, dear sister. You’ll be of his flock, so you’ll be saved and your sins forgiven, so it won’t matter that you’re the same. That’s what Papa says and that’s why we’re all here now. All that we’ve given up, we give in order to free ourselves of earthly ties, bindings to others”—and here her voice went tight—“others who’d keep us from our destiny.” Quickly she added, “You’d do well to begin believing it, too. You must prepare your heart for the end time that’s coming. What’s in your heart is what matters, Amelia. You don’t want to be corrupt in your heart—”

  “Oh, Vern, you’re scaring her to death,” Kate said. “And you sound just like Lavinia.”

  Angrily, Vern answered, “And should I lie, then?” She looked around to find her sister watching her with tilted head, like a cat, in the swivel mirror.

  Kate observed flatly, “The world hasn’t begun to end yet. Why hurry it up?”

  It was at that moment the clock on the dresser chimed. All three girls stared at it. Kate, who was closest, leaned forward and said, “Why, it’s keeping time.”

  “That’s impossible,” Vern replied.

  “Maybe so. But it’s doing it all the same.”

  And it was.

  Three

  Dear Mr. Charter,

  My apologies for not meeting you upon your arrival. Alas, duty to our community will keep me from you for some few days. Please do not enter Harbinger on your own but wait for my appearance, when I shall meet your family properly and accompany you across the gorge.

  You are our gatekeeper, Mr. Charter. Many who are sick or ill-formed will arrive, craving entry, and these people should gain entrance, provided their need and belief are real, of which you act as sole judge, sir. There are others who, knowing me by reputation only, will petition for entry into our Utopia. Some, gathered from our campaigns, will be deserving of it. As the Day draws nigh, their numbers will increase, but also shall those whose hearts are not ours, who come finally out of fear rather than reverence, and you must decide their worth. You must separate wheat from chaff. It’s a great burden I place upon you, our Minos, but one I know you to be capable of bearing. My agents tell me this.

  We will have no circuit riders, nor peddlers or drummers.

  The price to cross the gorge is one half dollar. I feel it is a small price to pay for the promise of salvation in the Next Life. Why, it’s no more than the price of a pair of woolen stockings.

  We shall meet by and by to discuss all matters and details.

  My future happiness rests with you.

  Elias Fitcher

  “What an odd thing to say,” Kate commented when her father had finished reading the letter to them.

  He folded
it up neatly. “He will be coming here,” he said. “We must make our house presentable.” As if they might not unpack otherwise.

  By the time the last of their belongings had been delivered and Mr. Charter arrived from the dock, dusk had fallen and they’d been too exhausted to do more than make up beds and retire for the night.

  During that previous afternoon Lavinia had assigned the rooms, choosing the slightly larger one for herself and Mr. Charter, directed the stevedores to carry her bed frame up to that room and assemble it, and made the girls drag the two old beds already there into the other second-floor room for themselves. In the assigning of rooms and shuffling of furniture, they had forgotten all about the letter by the hearth. Amy, preparing to make some biscuits for breakfast, had discovered it again.

  The foyer and dining room were now filled with crates of silver and chinaware, chairs and rolled-up carpets, lamps, brass fenders for two fireplaces, Mr. Charter’s double-door oak cabinet-on-stand, his Federal-style worktable, drop-leaf dining table, corner cabinet, and their three bureaus. The girls had had to pile items up or move them aside to clear a path from stairs to kitchen.

  Mr. Charter, contemplating their collected belongings, muttered, “We don’t have enough chairs for company.”

  The girls wanted to haul down the sofa and chairs from the attic room, which would make a very presentable parlor, one with enough seating for family and guests, but they met with immediate opposition. Lavinia insisted the furniture belonged to someone else and should be kept stored in case the owners returned. It wouldn’t do to have them arrive and find the family using the belongings as their own, she said, and so for the time being the attic furnishings were left alone. The one overturned chair in the second-floor hall the girls captured and took into their room.

  With the letter rediscovered and read, they still hadn’t had breakfast. Amy and Lavinia returned to the kitchen, and the other two girls assisted their father in distributing the furnishings and boxes around the house. They soon discovered that his worktable had been damaged in transit. One leg was split. Mr. Charter patted the table as if it were an old dog and said, “We’ll have to take it into the village and find some local craftsman to repair it. There’ll be someone who can work wood.”

  They set the table aside then, and decided they should start by carrying the larger pieces up the stairs, notably Lavinia’s black walnut bureau. Amy wanted to know why Lavinia hadn’t had the stevedores do it the night before, but she knew better than to ask. At least after moving that, everything else would seem easier. Even before they’d cleared a path wide enough to carry it to the stairs, a voice called from outside: “Halloo! Is there someone who can move this for me?”

  Mr. Charter turned immediately and went out. Kate and Vern wrapped themselves in shawls and followed after him.

  A small wagon sat before the pole blocking the road. The driver wore a large floppy hat. He was mud-stained and unshaven, his eyes red with exhaustion. The team of two horses looked as if they had been run nearly to death. Their nostrils smoked in the air. In the back of the wagon lay a woman. She stared up in their direction with sunken eyes dulled by illness, and seemed to see nothing. Her hands, which gripped a blanket up to her chin, trembled. Like her face, they were thin and bony.

  “I got to get her to Harbinger to be cured,” the driver explained. “This be the road, yes?”

  “It is,” said Mr. Charter.

  “There’s a toll, then, that I have to pay?”

  “There is and I collect it for Harbinger.”

  The man sagged a little. “There are barriers everywhere, it seems,” he replied.

  “It’s a half dollar, the toll.”

  “Is it so much?”

  Mr. Charter replied as the Reverend Fitcher had instructed him: “Since you’ve come here to renounce the outside, and offering all of your worldly possessions to the community, why, it is a very small price, sir. Hardly more than a pair of socks.”

  The man leaned into the back of the wagon and pawed through the belongings tied up beside the woman. When he turned back he was holding a pepperbox revolver. For a moment the family stood frozen, not knowing how to respond. Then he let go of the gun so that it flipped and dangled on his finger in the trigger guard. “Here,” he said, leaning toward Mr. Charter. “I’ve no use for it now we’re this close. And it’s worth far more than half a dollar.”

  Mr. Charter accepted the revolver. “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Sir, we’ve gone day and night from Delaware to get here in time. You wouldn’t hold us up so close?”

  Mr. Charter shook his head. “No, I’m certain the reverend wouldn’t want that.” He leaned on the pole. The upright had been notched so that it could be levered easily. He kept it raised while the wagon rolled beneath.

  “I’m much obliged to you, then,” the man called back; then he flicked the reins and the exhausted horses lifted their heads and picked up their pace. Mr. Charter eased the pole down across the road again.

  “That poor woman,” said Vern. “She can’t last.”

  “That will depend on the will of God. Reverend Fitcher has cured many with the touch of his hands. Lavinia and I’ve seen people made to walk who couldn’t take a step, and those with the gout suddenly free in their movements, painless in their joints. And in Milford there was a deaf man that was made to hear.”

  “Well, I pray she’ll recover,” Kate said, and Mr. Charter touched her shoulder and agreed, “That’s what you must do.”

  The three of them walked back to the house together.

  In the dining room, Mr. Charter explained solemnly to his wife, “My work here has begun.” He set the gun down on a crate. She looked at it as if he had placed a serpent there, took two steps back, and retreated to the kitchen.

  They labored through the rest of the morning. Most of all, the girls wanted to make the house look like their old home. One by one they and their father carried the bureaus, crates, and trunks up the stairs to the second floor. The items were old. Except for Lavinia’s things, all of the furniture predated the family’s economic misfortunes. While most everything was still in good condition, none had the polish of their stepmother’s black walnut pieces. The carpets were worse—nearly threadbare in places. Nevertheless, unrolling them made the rooms instantly familiar. They softened the coldness of the bare floors, but more than that the smell of the rugs belonged to Boston and their home. The tranquility imparted by that smell was infinitely more important than how the rugs looked.

  For lunch they ate the fresh biscuits they’d planned to have for breakfast. It was their first meal in more than a day.

  Afterward, Mr. Charter and Kate set off on foot for Jekyll’s Glen, carrying his damaged table between them, and Vern and Lavinia went along to buy some candles and other necessities. Amy remained behind. Her father instructed her in the maneuvering of the pike on the off chance that someone passed by, and she listened while scowling at her sisters.

  Save for Kate in a burgundy half-sleeve visite, the women wore shawls, and Mr. Charter his traveling coat. Vern had a small pagoda-style parasol and she brandished it, though there was no reason for her to bring it save for ostentation.

  The table was small and not nearly as heavy as the beds and bureaus, but Kate and her father had to rest a few times on the way. Lavinia and Vern waited with them. The division of duties meant that the two girls could not separate from the adults for conversation; they might as well, thought Kate, have gone in opposite directions.

  The village was bustling with activity. Even from a distance on the Catskill Turnpike they could count dozens of wagons and carts on both sides of the road, and people strolling along the gravel walks.

  A hawker had set up at the corner of the Mill Creek Road with a small grinding wheel and a stool. He was calling out, “Scissors and knives, sharp for your lives!” and ringing a tiny bell at the same time. People seemed to have been expecting him. A line queued up down the walk. Some people held razors, and some
knives, while others brandished all sorts of tools from axes to small scythes; and even a few scissors.

  Lavinia and Vern continued on to Van Hollander’s General Store, while Mr. Charter entered the first shop along the street, which happened to be the cooper’s, to inquire after a woodworker. Kate remained outside with the table. She nodded and smiled to people as they passed, and most nodded in reply or said, “Good morning,” even as they looked her over and tried to identify her. She watched her sister and Lavinia approach Van Hollander’s. On the street in front of the two stores, people were busy loading provisions into their wagons. There were one-horse carts and larger wagons pulled by a team. One cart in particular looked small and clumsy, with no mule or horse hitched to it. The owner, a slight, bearded man, came out from the store across from Van Hollander’s with a burlap bag filled with some kind of grain. He dumped the bag on top of another in the cart, then stepped in between the two shafts and began to pull it along himself. As he passed her, he smiled and said, “Good day,” pleasantly, although the muscles stuck out like ropes on his neck and arms from the strain. She smiled broadly and answered him in kind, and couldn’t help thinking of Jesus carrying His cruel burden through the streets, unbowed. The man shortly turned left on the Mill Creek Road.

  Her father came out of the shop and they picked up the table. He led the way back to the crossroad, and took Mill Creek Road to the right down past the church in the direction from which the stevedore had come the day before. She glanced back over her shoulder at the tiny cart vanishing in the opposite direction, and could not explain even to herself the sense of longing and loss that distant, retreating figure provoked.

  The woodworker’s shop was a broad shed beside his small house. It looked like a one-story barn with large double doors. As they approached, the smell of fresh wood and varnish enfolded them in a cloud.