The Blessed (29 page)

The next minute she was doubting her eyesight as well when she spotted the man leaning up against a fencepost alongside the road. Not a Shaker brother, but then the main road went straight through the village. It wasn’t uncommon to see men not in Shaker dress taking a moment’s rest beside the road at times. But she wasn’t expecting to see this man.

“Reuben. Is that really you?” She ran ahead of Aurelia in her hurry to speak to him.

29

At the sound of her voice, he pushed away from the post and stepped out on the path in front of her. “I’ve been watching for you, Miss Lacey, but I don’t know that I’d a known you with that bonnet on.”

He looked so much like home she wanted to hug him, but with the now serious Aurelia behind her watching and other eyes peering down on them from who knew what spying spots, she held herself back. But she didn’t hold back her smile. “It’s so good to see you, but what are you doing here? Not thinking on becoming a Shaker like the preacher, are you?”

“Oh, no, Miss Lacey.” He stepped back and held his broad hands palm out toward her, as though to keep the very idea of that away from him. “I couldn’t leave the church. Who’d take care of things?”

“I don’t know, Reuben. Nobody as good as you. That’s for sure.” Lacey reached out to touch his arm softly, and the unsettled look her words had brought to his face went away. But he didn’t smile.

“You told me I could come find you here if I needed to.” His face grew even more somber.

Lacey’s heart sank as she remembered why she’d told him that. “Somebody died.”

A tear slid out of the corner of Reuben’s left eye and down his cheek. “I couldn’t ask Miss Sadie Rose like you told me. It’s little Jimmy. He was trying to ride this horse he shouldn’t a been riding and fell off. Hit his head and never came to. Died last Friday.”

“Not Jimmy.” Lacey shut her eyes and the little boy’s face popped up before her. So full of mischief and life. He couldn’t be dead.

“That’s what Miss Sadie Rose keeps saying too. She’s taking it hard. He was her baby, you know.”

“I know.” Lacey pulled in a deep breath and swallowed down her tears as she pushed open her eyes and looked at Reuben again. “You need me to write out his name?”

“They’re gonna get a stone and I want to be ready to do my part soon as they do.” He reached into his pocket. “I brung the paper and a pencil for you. They said his real name was James. That’s what Miss Sadie Rose will want. His real name. James Crutcher. And the numbers of his years. 1838 to 1844. And whatever else you think is good.”

“‘Beloved son of Sadie and Harold Crutcher.’ Is that too many letters?” Lacey asked.

“I can work on it however long it takes. As long as you make the letters nice and clear. Wouldn’t want to chisel in a wrong line.”

Lacey took the paper and glanced around for something to lay it on to write out what Reuben needed. Aurelia was hanging back on the path with her face turned away from Reuben as though she feared a mere look at a man from the world would propel her into sin.

“This is Reuben,” Lacey told Aurelia. “From the Ebenezer church. He won’t do you any harm.”

“No, ma’am.” Reuben peered past Lacey toward Aurelia. “My mam taught me not to bother any of the ladies. At church or anywheres else.”

Aurelia kept her eyes on the pathway. “That is good. The same is taught here,” she said very softly.

Lacey had never heard Aurelia sound so timid. But then today Aurelia might be anything. So Lacey just skipped right to the matter at hand. “I don’t know how much you heard, but Reuben chisels out the names on the gravestones back at the church, but he has to have something to go by. Brother Elwood’s first wife used to do it for him, and then I did it when she died. So I told him he could come here if he needed help with his lettering.”

“She knows how to make the letters the way I need them like Miss Mona did,” Reuben said. “Most people don’t, you know.”

“So somebody died?” Aurelia still didn’t look up.

Perhaps it was a Shaker rule that Lacey had yet to be told that a sister had to keep her eyes downcast when around a man of the world, but it was odd talking to the top of Aurelia’s cap.

“Yea, it’s very sad. A little boy in the church a couple years older than Rachel.” Lacey remembered with a pang of guilt her irritation at Jimmy for telling Rachel she didn’t belong with Lacey. And now his life was gone. Poor Sadie Rose. Lacey’s sorrow over Rachel’s anger at her seemed trivial in contrast. At least Rachel was alive and well. Perhaps not happy, but breathing.

“Six then?”

“Six. Rachel is four.”

“Yea, that I know. So young,” Aurelia murmured.

“We just need a flat place so Miss Lacey can make the letters nice and clear.” Reuben pointed toward the meetinghouse down the road ahead of them. “We could go in there and lay the paper on the floor.”

“Nay, not in there,” Aurelia said, her voice stronger.

When Reuben looked puzzled, Lacey explained. “That’s the Shaker meetinghouse.”

“You mean like a church?” When Lacey nodded, he went on. “Well, I wouldn’t care for somebody laying a paper down on the floor or the pews at Ebenezer Church and writing out letters. Maybe you need to come back there, Miss Lacey.”

“It’s a long walk, Reuben. I see you rode your horse.” Lacey nodded toward the animal tied not far from where they stood.

“You could ride with me.”

“But both Rachel and I couldn’t. I couldn’t leave Rachel here alone.”

“She’s hardly alone among us, Sister Lacey. But this gets us nowhere. There are many other hard surfaces.” Aurelia raised her eyes off the ground to point toward the Centre Family House across from the meetinghouse. “You can use those steps.”

Reuben didn’t look where she pointed but instead stooped over a bit for a better look at Aurelia. “I thought I knew you.”

“Nay, you don’t know me.” Aurelia turned her face away from Reuben’s eyes.

Reuben stepped off the path onto the grass to keep peering at her. “I know faces. My mam always told me I was good at knowing faces. The bonnet fooled me for a minute the same as with Miss Lacey, but I’ve seen you. You’re that girl.” Reuben looked back at Lacey. “The one I told you about, Miss Lacey. The one that—”

“Nay, I do not know you.” Aurelia cut off Reuben’s words as she stepped up close to him to stare directly into his face. Her voice was cold and sure. “Nor do you know me. It is wrong for you to say so.”

Reuben backed away from her, a puzzled frown on his face. “But . . .” he started, when a sister walking past the Centre Family House let out a shriek. All three of them whirled around to look toward her.

“Oh, merciful heavens, Sister Abby must have seen a snake.” Aurelia sounded irritated.

“Where?” Reuben started toward the shrieking woman, more than ready to spring to the rescue. “I’m not a scared of snakes. I’ll take care of it.”

“Wait, Reuben. You don’t need to.” Lacey grabbed for his arm to stop him, but he was already gone.

Who knew what the Shaker rules were about snakes, but she was pretty sure they wouldn’t look favorably on a man from the world running to the rescue of a screaming Shaker sister. When Reuben gave no sign of hearing her, she hurried after him to keep him from causing trouble. She glanced back over her shoulder at Aurelia, who stayed rooted to the pathway with her hands on her hips. She appeared to be every bit as reluctant to follow Lacey running after Reuben as Lacey had been earlier to chase after Aurelia going to meet her angels.

But it wasn’t a snake. Instead the sister held one hand flat against her chest and with the other pointed toward the rooftop where one of the brothers was climbing up on the low railing around the middle flat part of the roof.

“What’s he doing?” the sister said breathlessly.

The house was three stories high with a chimney on each corner and a windowed cupola in the middle of the roof for the watchers. But this brother wasn’t a watcher. He was looking up at the sky and not down at them as he held on to one of the chimneys and wobbled back and forth on the railing.

“Is that the preacher?” Reuben squinted his eyes and stared up at the man.

“The preacher? What preacher?” Sister Abby said. She turned to look at Reuben, then gave another little shriek and stepped back when she saw his worldly clothes.

Reuben didn’t act like he noticed as he kept looking up. “That is him, isn’t it, Miss Lacey? Sure as we’re standing here in this spot.”

Lacey felt sick as she stared up at the man. His face was turned away from her, but Reuben was right. It was the preacher. “The man’s lost hold of his senses since he came here,” she said.

She didn’t know what to do. If she called out to him, that might startle him and make him fall. If she didn’t call out to him and he fell, then she’d always wonder if she should have yelled some words to him that might pull him back to sanity.

“Is he thinking on jumping?” Sister Abby whispered.

“He wouldn’t do that,” Reuben said quickly. “That would be a sin that he couldn’t never get forgiveness for. I’ve heard him say as much in the pulpit more than once. If you kill yourself, there ain’t no way to ask forgiveness for the killing. Because you’re dead.”

“Whether he throws himself off or simply slips and falls, the ground will be every bit as hard either way.” Aurelia walked up behind them.

“Shouldn’t we do something?” Sister Abby whispered, her hands fluttering on her chest again. “Perhaps call out to him. Let him know we’re watching and don’t want him to fall.”

“Yea, why haven’t you called out to him already, Sister Lacey?” Aurelia asked.

“I feared startling him and making him lose his footing,” Lacey said.

“Is that what you choose to believe?”

Lacey looked from the preacher to Aurelia. “I don’t want him to fall.”

“It would free you.”

“Free her from what?” Sister Abby asked.

“Her sins.”

“Miss Lacey ain’t doing no sinning,” Reuben said. “She’s a good woman.”

Lacey ignored Reuben as she looked back up at the preacher trying to balance on the railing like a crow on a fence rail. “I don’t want him to fall,” she repeated. “It is wrong for you to think I would.”

“Yea, the angels were only testing you, Sister. They don’t want him to fall either,” Aurelia said. “You can call out to him. It will pull him away from his torments so that he can step back to safety.”

Lacey cupped her hands around her mouth and called up to the preacher. “Brother Elwood, be careful. We fear you might fall.”

For a minute she didn’t think he heard her, but then Aurelia added her call to Lacey’s. “Yea, be careful, Brother Elwood.”

Aurelia was wrong. He was startled by their voices as he looked down toward them. He teetered there for a moment before he grasped hold of the edge of the chimney. Even then, Lacey wasn’t sure he was going to be able to keep himself from falling. Another brother appeared on the roof and ran to grab his shirt and tug him back down on the roof. They fell backward together.

Lacey’s knees felt weak as she blew out a breath of relief. Reuben clapped his hands together, shut his eyes, and started praying out loud. After waving air toward her face with her apron hem, Sister Abby glanced toward Lacey with a trembling smile before she went on up the steps into the house. Aurelia kept staring up at the rooftop as though expecting something else to happen. Perhaps her angels to appear to take credit for the preacher’s delivery from death. But all that happened was the man who had appeared on the roof helped the preacher to his feet and guided him toward the cupola.

“For the wages of sin is death,” Aurelia said barely above a whisper.

“But all sin.” Lacey kept her voice low too, as beside her Reuben kept pouring out his thanks for Preacher Palmer not falling.

“And all die,” Aurelia said.

“The Lord promises us forgiveness.”

“Do you think every promise is kept?” Aurelia’s eyes bored into Lacey. “If you do, then you are even more innocent than the angels think.”

“The Lord keeps his promises. Your angels have to know that. Every Believer believes that.”

“And so, have you become a Believer?” Aurelia raised her eyebrows at Lacey. “Are you ready to sign the Covenant of Belief? To become one of us?”

“I am not a Shaker, but I do believe.”

“And what do you believe?”

It was the second time in one day she’d been asked that question, and once again she didn’t have a ready answer. What did she believe? Beside her Reuben stopped praying as though he too was listening for her answer. She could claim what Miss Mona believed. But she needed to find her own words of belief. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Was that her? Poor in spirit, but still believing. Depending on the Lord to somehow make a way for her and for Rachel. Trying to step away from sin. “I believe I am blessed.”

Aurelia’s lips turned up the barest bit. “Gifted with blessings. That is not a bad thing to believe.” She turned to walk away. When Lacey didn’t follow, she glanced back. “Aren’t you coming?”

“Nay.” Lacey held up Reuben’s paper. “I must do Reuben’s letters first.”

“Then write out the letters of the dead child’s name. And think in your heart whether that mother feels blessed on this day.”

“Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted,” Lacey said.

“Words easy to speak. Ask our Brother Isaac about mourning. Ask him if comfort is easy to find.” She turned and began walking quickly away.

“I do know her.” Reuben spoke up beside Lacey. “No matter what she says. Well, maybe not know her like I know you with your name and all, but I saw her. More than once. I never forget a face.”