Gennie twisted in her seat. “I’m not frightened,” she protested, “not really.”
Rose’s mothering smile faded. “You’ve been through a lot for someone so young, and I feel that—”
“I’m almost eighteen!” Gennie bit her lip and sat back against her seat. “I’m sorry, Rose, I shouldn’t have raised my voice.” She stared out her window.
These flare-ups had become more common in recent months. Rose remembered herself at Gennie’s age, and she worried. She flashed Gennie a quick smile.
“All is forgiven, Gennie. You are right, you’re almost eighteen, and I’ll try not to treat you like a child.”
They reached the outskirts of the town of Languor, population 2,520, mostly poor. Rose slowed down to a crawl as they passed the crooked shacks that housed the poorest. As always, the big, black car drew attention from dirty, running children and jobless men sitting on broken stoops. One man raised a pint bottle in ironic greeting, since Shakers were known to be teetotalers, then lowered it to his lips. A woman hanging laundry glanced over her shoulder at the car, then shouted to a little girl sitting in the grass near the road. The child jumped up and ran to her.
The car headed for a group of older boys playing baseball in the road with stones and a stick. Rose had used the horn with the occasional cow, but never with people. Now she edged to the right as far as possible to avoid the boys without disturbing their game. Two boys moved aside to let the car pass. But another, apparently the pitcher because he held a large rock in his hand, whirled on the car and glared at its occupants.
“Rose?”
“We’ll be through here in a moment, Gennie.”
As the bulky Plymouth passed him, the boy pointed a ragged arm at its occupants, his fist wrapped around the rock. He shouted something Rose couldn’t hear. Then he shouted again, louder, his thin face contorted with hatred. “Witches,” he shrieked at them.
“Rose, he’s following us!”
The small back window of the Plymouth exploded inward, spraying shards of glass across the spacious backseat. A rock, slowed by the impact, fell spent on the seat.
Startled, Rose swerved farther to the right and onto the grassy shoulder. The Plymouth stalled. Still within range of the boy, she could see his angry, triumphant face. She stepped on the starter button, shifted, and pressed hard on the accelerator, but the wheels spun deeply into the soft shoulder. She pulled on the brake, pushed Gennie’s head down beneath the level of the dashboard, and leaned over her back to shield her. They waited, barely breathing, listening. A loose sliver of glass tinkled as it fell belatedly. The boy’s shouting had stopped. They heard no children’s laughter, no mother’s call. In fact, they heard nothing at all.
Rose raised her head. She slowly lifted her upper body from Gennie’s bent back but with one strong arm held Gennie’s head down, out of sight.
“Stay down. I’ll check outside.” Rose reached for her door handle.
“Nay, you mustn’t get out of the car!” Gennie grabbed at Rose’s arm. “One of those boys threw that rock. He might hurt you. Please can’t we drive on?”
But Rose had already turned the handle and cracked open her door. With her free hand, she squeezed Gennie’s shoulder and gave her a smile that didn’t cover the worry in her eyes.
“If he wanted to hit us again, he’s had his chance. Anyway, I need a rug from the trunk to help us get the car unstuck. We’ll have to make arrangements in Languor for repairs.” She stepped out of the car, sweeping her skirts behind her. For Gennie’s sake she tried to appear fearless.
“Nothing to be frightened of, they’ve gone,” she reported cheerfully, as Gennie rolled down her window. “Not a soul around. But you’d better stay inside, just in case.” She reached over and patted the girl’s arm, then straightened. She stood on dry and weedy grass which served as lawn for a ramshackle cottage. Three chairs, all empty, faced the road from the middle of the yard. The windows were shaded against the daylight with tattered brown curtains. One of the curtains twitched as if it had just been dropped into place.
Rose’s unease grew with each moment outside the car. She hurried to the trunk and pulled out two rag rugs. She could hear the light tinkle of shattered glass as she closed the trunk lid. Bending quickly, she spread the rugs in front of the Plymouth’s back tires.
With her heart thudding heavily, Rose took one last look around. Where the boys had played baseball, there was only an empty, dusty street. No children laughed and chased one another from house to house. The man with the whiskey bottle had disappeared. A basket still heaped with laundry sat on the ground next to a clothesline that held a white blanket neatly hung with clothespins for half its length. The other half grazed the dirt below.
Gennie scrambled out of the car to huddle beside Rose. The girl’s shoulders were hunched in fear as she wrapped herself tightly in her cloak. Her eyes were wide and dark, like those of a wary cat.
“Don’t you notice it, Rose?”
Rose’s breath caught in her throat. She listened now to the silence. Circling slowly, she peered down the empty street and abandoned yards. She caught a sudden movement by the corner of a nearby house. Just a hint of sleeve, the flash of sun on a stone surface.
“Gennie, get in the car. Now!” The girl obeyed instantly.
Her heart lurching, Rose dragged open her own heavy door and jumped inside, barely pulling her skirts off the narrow running board in time to avoid catching them as she slammed the door. She hit the starter button. Through clenched teeth, she mumbled an urgent prayer of supplication.
As the Plymouth sputtered to life, another rock whipped through the shattered back window with force enough to slam the back of Gennie’s seat and thud to the floor behind her. Gennie instinctively slipped down in her seat and pulled the hood of her cloak over her head.
“Good,” Rose said. “Stay down, we’ll be out of this neighborhood soon.”
The car lurched and the tires skidded briefly, then slipped onto the rugs. At once the Plymouth shot back onto the road, spitting the rugs out from under it. Rose pushed the sturdy automobile to speeds it had not yet experienced in its short life. It bounced wildly over the ruts in the old dirt road.
They reached a quiet residential street, lined with elm trees that touched in graceful arches over the center of the road. Rose pulled the car over to one side, and folded a trembling Gennie into her arms. At that moment, Gennie had to be a child again.
In a few moments, the girl pushed away and sniffled.
“I’m okay,” she said as she pulled a handkerchief from the sleeve of her dress and swiped impatiently at her nose. Her lapse into childhood was over.
“Do you feel up to talking to the police?”
Gennie nodded bleakly. “Why did they do that to us?”
Rose sighed and leaned back against the black leather. “Because we Shakers are being blamed for Johann’s death, and for other problems, as well. This has happened to us before, though you’ve never had to witness it. We are different. We dress oddly, we worship strangely, we create our families differently. We often have better crops and more food than our neighbors. So some people say that we must be evil, maybe we’re able to cast spells or some such ignorant nonsense. If something goes wrong, it seems easy and convenient to blame the odd ones. The parents talk about it, and the children act.” Rose glanced back at the shattered rear window.
Gennie sat up straight and pushed her handkerchief into the pocket of her cape. “My eighteenth birthday is coming up in February, you know.”
Rose watched her in silence.
“Well, I don’t know if I really want to be different,” Gennie said, without meeting Rose’s eyes. “I just don’t know.”
“Perhaps we could talk about it later, when all this has settled down?” Rose eased the car back onto the street. Gennie stared at her hands as they drove the two remaining blocks to the Languor County Courthouse, which housed the sheriff’s office.
SEVEN
EVEN IN
SUCH A POOR AREA, THE COUNTY COURT-HOUSE dominated the town center. A broad flight of stone steps, worn in the middle, led to story-high, wooden double doors, ornately carved with motifs of tobacco leaves. The building itself, of large limestone blocks, looked more impressive from a distance. Up close, the doors needed sanding and painting, and years of grime stained the limestone. Shaker buildings were simpler but far cleaner.
Rose and Gennie clattered across the large rotunda, over a huge map of Kentucky formed with colored stones and painted slate tiles. The gold outline of Languor County had nearly worn away. They climbed a scuffed marble staircase and pushed open a frosted glass door with COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE painted in large, black letters. A broad, oak bar, once varnished but now dull and gouged with cigarette burns, stretched the length of the room, separating the sheriff’s office from the public.
The officer on duty sprawled at a desk behind the wooden barrier. A hefty, broad-faced man, he made the cluttered desk look a size too small. A coffee-stained copy of the Cincinnati Enquirer shared the desktop with a cracked coffee cup and an ashtray spilling over with cigarette stubs.
“You’re sure someone attacked your car, Miss Callahan?” the officer asked without leaving his chair. “But you didn’t see who did it?”
“Because the rocks were thrown from behind, as we told you.” Rose spoke each word with the weary patience of one who has said the same thing three times over.
“Yes’m,” he said, with a longing glance toward the newspaper. “You think you were attacked by a young boy. Look, I can see how you two ladies might of been spooked by a rock flying up and hittin’ the car.” He glanced at Rose’s thin shoulders and smirked. “Those roads are tough driving, even for a man.”
“If you’d care to examine our car,” Rose said, barely controlled anger seeping into her voice, “you’ll find one rock is resting on the backseat and another on the floor. Believe me, they are far too large to have flown up, as you suggest, and hit the window on their own.”
The officer remained seated, an inert lump.
“Perhaps we should just wait for Sheriff Brock or Deputy O’Neal to return,” Rose said.
“I don’t reckon they’ll be back for hours. They’re both out at the Pike farm, tryin’ to calm down old man Pike and that younger son of his. Some feud goin’ on with their neighbor, Peleg Webster. Say, don’t Peleg’s farm border on your land?” A local feud aroused more interest in the man than an alleged attack on Shakers, that was clear.
“The Pikes are saying that Peleg’s hogs is gettin’ into their corn. So they’re doin’ their own butchering.” He laughed hoarsely at his own joke and ended on a cough. He pulled a pack of Camels out of his shirt pocket. After selecting one, he started to put the pack away. He paused, narrowed his eyes, and tapped the top to loosen one cigarette. With a lopsided grin, he leaned forward and held out the pack.
“Have a smoke?”
“Nay, but thank you,” Rose said evenly. “We gave them up long ago.”
Gennie beamed at Rose, delighted. But she wondered, too, why the officer wouldn’t believe them and even tried to embarrass them. She had made many trips to town with Rose before. Sometimes children stared at their clothing or pointed and laughed, but an adult usually shushed them. No one had ever tried to hurt her. And this policeman, why wouldn’t he help them? If only Grady were here. He would believe them.
“Perhaps you would be good enough to bring me some paper and a pen,” Rose said, “and I’ll write a note for Sheriff Brock or Deputy O’Neal.”
Sighing loudly, the officer shuffled papers in search of a blank sheet. As he did so, a young woman glided into the office. She closed the door behind her and stood framed against the frosted glass, as though waiting for all eyes to turn toward her. North Homage still nurtured a small silkworm industry, so Gennie recognized the fluid softness of fine silk in the bright red dress that clung to her slender form. Smooth blond hair capped her heart-shaped face. Red lipstick, brilliant against her fair skin, matched her dress. The scent of roses drifted behind as she pushed forward with her hips and swayed across the room.
“Hiya, Miss Emily,” the officer said, his face lighting at the sight of her. “Grady said you was stopping by. He said to wait in his office.”
Emily bestowed a closed-mouth smile on the group, lingering on Gennie’s plain, dark clothing and bonnet. Without a word, she swung her hips toward a closed door behind the reception desk.
They all watched her slide through the door, the officer visibly savoring every movement. Gennie felt a pain that was new to her, like a cramping of the heart. Grady’s girlfriend. That had to be who she was; she looked like a girlfriend. She hadn’t worn a ring, so maybe she wasn’t his wife, not yet anyway. Emily was the name the sheriff had mentioned as they’d examined Johann’s body, and Grady had looked so angry. Had Johann tried to take Emily away from him?
Soft hair and swaying hips and a red silk dress, not yards and yards of dark blue wool and a stiff bonnet. Gennie glanced at Rose, who was handing her completed note to the inattentive officer. Had Rose ever wanted to float in red silk? Her eyes wandered back to the closed door of Grady’s office and back to Rose. The trustee was watching her intently, her head tilted to one side and a worried furrow between her brows.
“Come along, then,” Rose said firmly, “we’ve done all we can here, and it’s growing late. We’ve some tasks to do in town before evening meal. There is no time now to have the car’s window fixed. I’ll ask one of the brethren to arrange for its repair.”
A few moments later they descended the worn stone steps of the courthouse. Two blocks brought them to Languor’s open-air marketplace, which showed the Depression’s effects on the rural town. A cafe and rows of old shops, some slanting and all badly in need of paint, lined three boundaries of a dirty, cobblestoned square, converted each Friday to a farmers’ market. The western border of the square opened onto a park, or what would be a park if it were cared for. Benches, spotted with bird droppings, scattered in no particular pattern on the crushed, brown grass. Near the park’s center stood a large kiosk, still showing patches of bright blue paint, where the small Languor band had played bravely through the 1929 stock market crash and the first few years of the Depression. Now the instruments were silent, sold long ago for spare parts to repair farm machinery bought on credit.
Rose and Gennie wove through the open town square, among stalls filled with produce. Each stall had its own special scent, from sweet-tart apple to the grassy smell of fresh corn. The horse-drawn farm wagons added the familiar odors of manure and damp earth.
“Do we really need potatoes?” Gennie asked as Rose picked through a pile of them in one of the first stalls they came to.
“We’ll need extra, I’m afraid. We’ll probably be feeding the whole town on Sunday. Hold this for me, would you?” Gennie draped the solid, well-worn basket over one arm. She watched as Rose examined each potato, feeling for soft spots, before placing it in the basket. So many questions spun in Gennie’s mind. Her feelings seemed to tumble over one another, creating the force of a midwestern tornado. Intent on her task, Rose’s movements were so quick and sure, her features composed. She seemed completely recovered from the frightening attack on their car and the unsympathetic reaction of the police officer. But Gennie remembered Rose’s response when the officer had mockingly offered her a cigarette, and it made her more approachable.
“Rose,” she said, “I was wondering about something you said back at the sheriff’s office.” Her voice came out in a nervous squeak, and she fumbled with the nearly full basket.
“What would that be, Gennie?”
“What you said about smoking. That you’ve given it up, I mean. You didn’t really, did you?”
“When have you ever seen me smoke, now, I ask you?” Rose grinned as she selected one last potato and placed it carefully in the basket.
“Never. But, I mean, you didn’t really smoke, did you?”
“Many Believers did, you
know.” She raised her eyebrows at Gennie. “I hope you will not take that as permission to smoke. Most of us gave it up many years ago, when we decided that it might not be healthy, though we delayed much longer than the eastern Believers.”
Gennie was still puzzled and showed it.
“All right,” Rose continued, “I’ll explain. Believers used to smoke pipes mostly, sisters and brethren both, but it’s been, oh, nearly one hundred years since we stopped. Once, early last century, I’ve heard that Believers in several villages expected Mother Ann to appear to them, and they actually held a smoking meeting to honor her arrival. Brethren and sisters both smoked for an hour in a closed room.” Rose snickered. “I don’t suppose any of them cared if they ever smoked again after that!”
All the stories Gennie had heard before painted the old Believers as saints, or nearly so. Gennie felt more comfortable knowing that maybe they were human, too, and she was pleased that Rose had shared the story with her.
“We angered our neighbors when we stopped, of course,” Rose continued in a more sober tone. “Many of them were and still are tobacco farmers. That young deputy, Grady O’Neal, his family became quite well-to-do tobacco farming. That is how he was able to attend college.” Gennie felt her cheeks grow warm at the mention of Grady’s name.
Rose touched her lightly on the shoulder. “Gennie, we’ll have a talk, you and I, very soon. You are growing up so quickly.”
Before Gennie could respond, she heard a familiar voice. Rose heard it, too, and they both turned to see Grady himself gesturing angrily to a man several stalls away. The man was half a head taller than Grady, with muscular shoulders squeezed into a tight flannel work shirt. Gennie felt there was something familiar about his broad face, distorted though it was in anger. She turned to ask Rose about him and was surprised to see her frown.
“Who is that, Rose? Do you know him?”
As if he had heard the question, the man looked over at them, his eyes barely brushing Gennie and locking on Rose.
Death of a Winter Shaker Page 5