Fitcher's Brides

by Gregory Frost

  One night as the leather cat snapped across her skin, Fitcher asked her, “Are you like your sister? Have you known any men before you came here?”

  “No,” she said at once. She wasn’t like Vern. Vern with Henri was not like her with Michael Notaro, and she chose to interpret “before you came here” as here to Jekyll’s Glen with her father and Lavinia. She hadn’t known anyone. Hadn’t wanted to know anyone before then. She couldn’t be made responsible. “No,” she repeated, reaffirming, settling it in her mind.

  Each whipping seemed more brutal than the one before. One night the intense pain pushed her beyond tears, beyond agony. It was as though she moved outside her body and floated over him, where she could watch the knotted strips bite into her back, the welts rise up beneath them, red lines slashed like ribbons from her shoulders to her bottom. Her bare feet protruded beneath her, and he resorted to whipping her soles. She felt none of it. Someone approached her, and a voice whispered in her ear, “You are free now.” The sound gathered her on invisible wings. Her spirit soared. She turned her face to the sky and said, “Thank you,” and Fitcher, his arm raised, stopped. She could see him even though he was behind her.

  He dropped the whip, then bent down and lifted her. From her vantage, she looked frail and tiny, no bigger than a child in his arms. He placed her upon the bed, stretched her out. Then, with the egg, he smoothed her skin. The poison of perdition leached out of her and into the egg. Held by some angel, she hovered overhead and watched. His hand let go of the egg, left it lying in the small of her back while his fingers brushed gently over her backside, and down into the crevice between her thighs. Her body on the bed moaned and her spirit floating above dissolved.

  She lay upon the bed, dreaming of his exploring hand, wanting him to delve deeper. She turned over to embrace him.

  There was no one there. The room was dark. The cold marble egg lay upon the mattress. It had been that touching between her legs, that sensation casting her dream.

  She cupped the egg in her hands and curled childlike around it. The rest of the night she didn’t dream at all.

  At the end of the week, as she was walking to the house from the village, she overheard someone outside one of the camp tents speaking of a dance that night. It was a dark-skinned boy no older than she, and he was describing the dance to whoever lay inside the mildew-darkened tent. He said they danced in the barn at the far end of the village. He didn’t seem to be aware of who Amy was. She asked if the Reverend Fitcher attended. The boy rose up and replied, “Sometimes, but he don’t dance. He just watches.”

  After the meal, she located Fitcher on the back porch of the house and asked him about the dancing. “It is a healing thing they do,” he said, as if describing the behavior of a different species. “A release of energy, a way to overcome their exhaustion, to free themselves in a way from earthly bounds. You would like to join in, I take it.”

  “If I might be allowed.”

  “If you feel the need, then most certainly you may. I myself will be on hand to safeguard them. For while it is a harmless, even beneficial pastime, there are always some who would warp it like a bad piece of lumber into some unnatural shape. Rather than allow that, I will enter the dance myself and lead it. I must stand vigilant always for signs of depravity. Of course, not from you, my dear Amelia. You’ve come far through your penance.”

  “Yes,” she agreed. She did not mention—barely even acknowledging herself—that she hoped to see Michael Notaro there. It had been weeks since she’d even laid eyes on him.

  The dancing began before Amy and Fitcher arrived. They strode through the orchard, and past the dark shops. He spoke of the stars in the heavens, of God’s purpose in creating the lights of the sky—“to entice us, to give us mysteries to solve in our lives.”

  Amy said nothing. She was listening to the music, watching for the light spilling from the barn, which glowed from behind the buildings like a hidden fire. Like a lowly earthbound star.

  Then ahead, in the gleam of lamps and candles, the dancers sashayed across the floor, back and forth in a formation she recognized from years gone by, when Vern had shown her how to dance. She had only danced with Vern and Kate, never with a man.

  The people were strangers to her. Some of them interrupted their pleasure to acknowledge her husband. They bowed or nodded, just as they’d done to her the time he’d taken her family on his tour. She’d thought the welcome was meant only for strangers, newcomers.

  Off to the side, Michael Notaro stood against a post watching the dancers. He had one knee bent, and held a cup of something. His look was dark and brooding. He seemed thinner, and his hair unkempt. Secretly, she delighted to see him so; not that she was cruel, but she wanted to know that he truly cared, that their separation had been difficult for him, too. She saw him and knew that he missed her.

  She and Fitcher entered the barn. At once two people jumped up and offered him the bale of hay on which they’d been perched. He thanked them and sat down upon it. Amy took his hand and tried to draw him back onto his feet. “Won’t you dance with me, Elias?” she asked. Despite everything, she thought she could coerce him.

  He replied, “Not just now, my dear. You must find someone else to entertain you awhile.” His glance flicked from her to something across the room. Even before she turned, following his gaze, she knew. He’d looked at Notaro, as if he knew what was in her mind.

  By now word of Fitcher’s arrival had spread through the barn. Notaro glared their way resentfully through the rows of dancers, as though angry and frustrated that they should rob him even of this small retreat. He pushed off from the post and walked over to a group of women. A moment later, one of them stepped out with him into the center of the room. They joined the dance in progress, and once they’d fallen in step, Notaro looked straight at Amy once and thereafter pretended she didn’t exist.

  Fitcher called, “You there, come over here.” She turned back, fearful that he’d called to Notaro, but he was gesturing to a blond-haired boy who was standing off to the side of the dancers and who might not have been any older than she.

  He came forward with obvious reluctance, giving her a troubled look. “Reverend?” he said.

  “My wife needs to dance, Mr. Gibbons, and I would greatly appreciate it if you’d be so kind as to accommodate her. You don’t have a partner, do you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then it’s settled. Amelia, this is Orlando Gibbons, who has been here almost since we laid the first stone at Harbinger.”

  The boy bowed and offered his arm, but his eyes met hers with worry, almost fear. She accepted his arm and together they walked toward the dancers. The dance was just ending, and so they waited while some dancers left. Amy looked for Notaro, saw him walk away from his partner and out of the barn.

  Orlando Gibbons leaned close to Amy and said, “I’m most sorry about your sister. I did like her very much.”

  “My—you knew her?”

  “She came to this dance one time, when your husband was away. And I met her and danced with her just like now. She’d been ill, too ill to go with the reverend upon his crusade.”

  The fiddler played introductory notes and they moved up the floor and took their places among the two rows of dancers. Amy picked up the steps quickly. It was a reel of the sort she’d done with Vern a few times in the parlor back in Boston. She thought of Vern back there right now. “Ill or not, she should never have deserted him, Mr. Gibbons.”

  “No, I suppose not,” he said, then danced away from her. Upon his return, he said, “The reverend has pretty terrible luck that way. I think God tests him to see if he’s worthy to lead.”

  She wanted to ask what he meant by “that way,” but now the dance led her to another partner, and she cast her eye about for Notaro as she promenaded back to the center line. If he had returned, he was hiding from her. Fitcher, on the other hand, seated prominently, was engaged in a discussion with a red-headed woman whom Amy hadn’t seen before—or wa
s she the same one who had danced with Notaro? Yes, she thought, it was. Fitcher glanced her way, then said something sharp to the woman. She lowered her head, took his hand and kissed it, then moved off through the crowd and out of the barn.

  Amy changed partners again. She had to pay too much attention to the dance, which distracted her from what was going on around her, the little puzzle pieces of larger events. She stepped to the edge of the dance area and turned to step back to her partner. He had gone, and in his place, dancing opposite her now, was her husband. His hands were on his hips and he grinned at her surprise. As they closed, he commented, “I do so love a good fiddle tune.” The look of glee on his face surprised her.

  They danced around each other, and it seemed to her that the music changed, its tempo picked up although she continued to step in time and felt no faster herself. She sensed movement outside the line of dancers and found that everyone was standing up. They moved apart, in pairs, in groups. Like a fire the dancing spread across the barn. Fitcher clapped his hands, and others picked it up. The pattern changed, no longer a reel. People were whirling in place, spinning around each other, a living astrolabe of wheeling bodies. The forces gathered her up and spun her in her own orbit, around Fitcher, around the floor. She slid past Orlando Gibbons. He didn’t even notice her. His eyes were rolled to the ceiling as if focused on Heaven. A palpable wave of ecstasy washed over her. Her body tingled. She shuddered divinely, linked arms with someone, and they flung each other into new orbits, remarkably never crashing into anyone else. She had no idea where she was going but her every step seemed choreographed.

  She rolled against someone, laughed, and found that she’d linked arms with Michael Notaro. Where had he come from? She ought to have been shocked, embarrassed. She should have pushed away, but she couldn’t release him. The wide-eyed look he gave her might have been terror, as if he also didn’t know how he’d come to be there, but he didn’t let go either. He said, “Amy, I love you.”

  Then something cut between them—a shadow, a swift blur like a storm cloud scudding through the room—and the link broke and she spun away, into the middle of the maelstrom, up against Fitcher again. He anchored her while the crowd, young and old alike, whirled about them, heads thrown back, faces turned to Heaven, beaming, joyous; a few shaking, eyes either closed or rolled back in their sockets. A woman nearby cried out, an animal sound. She fell into the crowd.

  The music wound down, slowed, slid into the simple reel it had been before. Dancers stumbled and walked this way and that, some with their arms out as if blind. Many of them headed for the outdoors. People collapsed on the floor, others upon the hay bales. One woman had her head thrown over the end of the bale, her tongue protruding, her hands stretched up for the ceiling. She made noises that might have been demented utterances, words in some alien language. Those outside the barn walked in circles or away down the lanes, into darkness. A wind was blowing now, as if their spinning had set the sky in motion. At the very edge of the light Amy saw Michael Notaro glance back once, straight at her, then turn and break into a run. The night swallowed him.

  The original row of eight dancers and the five-piece orchestra remained. They continued the reel as if nothing had happened, though they were visibly shaken, as disheveled and confused as anyone else—as much as she was.

  Fitcher’s hands touched her shoulders. He moved behind her, guiding her in a sidestep. He said, “I hope you enjoyed the dance. It’s all the purifying we’ll do this night.”

  The music concluded. Moving beside her, Fitcher took her arm and walked with her out of the barn. The remaining Fitcherites beamed at them as if every earthly care had been swept away. Most bid the reverend a good night. A few thanked him for dancing. She saw one couple embracing, kissing, off in the shadows between two buildings. She thought of Notaro, imagined it was herself there, and felt a stab of loss, a twist of desire in her belly. Amy saw the hands of the man, whoever he was, slide up under the woman’s skirts. Her head craned around to watch but she couldn’t slow down: She was floating on Fitcher’s touch and he impelled her on, down the twisting lanes and toward the house on the hill that glowed with candles like a spray of stars.

  Twenty-four

  AMY WANDERED DOWN TO the village after dinner the next night in the hope there would be another dance.

  She found the barn closed up, and the village lanes oddly deserted, as if everyone had left. She wondered if they had all stayed at the house, maybe gathered in the Hall of Worship. How could she have missed them? Even to herself, she pretended that she was looking for everyone, and not just Michael Notaro.

  After walking through the maze of lanes, she meandered back across the edge of the fields and into the ripe groves. She hadn’t come out the other side when the alarm bell sounded.

  Amy had heard it rung for meals, but this was nothing like the leisurely clanging that called the devout to dinner. Someone was pulling the clapper back and forth in a fury. She ducked under the branches to where she could see the rear of the house.

  People in and around the tents had sprung up and were walking or running toward the noise. At the house, lights appeared—lanterns or torches being lit at the back porch. These clustered around the bell. Then, like a swarm of lightning bugs, they headed across the yard and toward the woods.

  A compelling sense of urgency overtook Amy. She lifted the skirt of her dress and broke into a run. She dodged through the treacherous tents with their ropes and pegs, and then between the markers of the cemetery.

  At the edge of the woods a man was waving his arms. She reached him at the same time as the crowd did. He turned grimly and led them all into the woods. The lanterns revealed the path, and she fell in among the others moving one or two at a time along it. The path soon ran up against the towering iron fence. The man stopped there.

  “A couple a boys playing Indians found him,” he told everyone, and gestured up with the light. Up the black iron verticals, almost the height of two people, up to where the body hung. In the dusk she couldn’t quite tell what had happened: It looked as if someone were balancing on the top of the fence. The light dwindled before it reached that high. Farther back a torch was being passed along, hand to hand above them. At the same time the crowd parted and Elias Fitcher came marching through. He overtook the passing torch, snatched and carried it with him to the fence.

  He asked what had happened. The man who’d led them repeated his explanation about playing children, and pointed. Fitcher raised the torch high overhead.

  The face, twisted sideways, stared down as if in terror at the torch itself. It was Michael Notaro.

  The body hung impaled upon two of the uprights: One had pierced his belly, the other his throat. The body had sunk on the spikes all the way to the top rail. His arms dangled, one inside and one outside the fence. Blood from his wounds had run down them. Drops hung from the splayed fingertips of the hand above Fitcher, extended as if offering to pull someone up.

  The crowd evaporated for Amy. The woods around her own house folded around her. She saw places where she’d lain with him, kissed him, laughed with him, in the dark, in the underbrush, once in the back of his wagon. She combed leaves from her hair. She touched his dimpled chin, felt his stiff whiskers, smelled his hair. Then someone spoke, and she stood among them again.

  “He was trying to climb out, looks like,” said the man who’d led them there. “Trying to run away. He must’a shimmied up one of the poles, but slipped and fell back’ard.”

  “Yes, poor fellow,” Fitcher concurred. “We must get him down from there. Someone bring us ropes. We must be very careful how we go about it. I don’t want to lose someone else on the prongs of this slippery fence.”

  The call carried through the crowd for ropes.

  Fitcher turned suddenly to Amy. “I think you should not be here for this,” he told her, then to the others, “nor any other woman or child should witness this. It’s too grisly a thing. Please now, some of you men stay and assist us. But no
one else.”

  But Amy couldn’t move. She had fixed upon Notaro’s open eyes. The flickering torch made it seem that they shifted, that some life was left in him. Fitcher finally stepped between her and the horrible accusatory face. He turned her firmly until her back was to the fence. “Go on now. This is nothing for you to dwell on.”

  The majority of the crowd were moving away, following lights back to the house, and she fell in with them. She trudged along silently, unable to react to the death of her lover—even to acknowledge that was what he had been. Now she would never tell Fitcher about him. Don’t speak ill of the dead.

  Someone ahead of her said, “It was the Angel of Death got him, sure as I’m alive.” She glanced up sharply but couldn’t make out more than the shape of a head, a shaggy silhouette in the darkness. Out of the woods, they wove a path around the grave markers. The silhouette beside him replied, “I seen something moving about in the woods just afore supper. Tall and thin it was.”

  “You probably saw him.”

  “Naw, was nothing like him. I knew Notaro well enough, and he was a short fella, though he’d got a mite skinny of late. This thing was like smoke outen a chimney.”

  “Probably all it was. Chimney smoke clings in them trees all the time.”

  “No, ’twasn’t the same.”

  “Well, what was it like, then?”

  “Like a shadow turned side-on—more that than smoke. I come near as the cemetery to look on it. Didn’t have a face, far as I could tell. Like maybe there was a cloak over its head. I wasn’t going to get no closer. Notaro—I bet it was hunting him, sure as I’m here. You saw his eyes. Dear Jesus, I’m tellin’ Emma not to go into these woods on no account. Someone should warn them young boys to stay off, too.”