Sins of a Shaker Summer (16 page)

As Gennie inched around Thomas, she flashed a wide-eyed, pleading glance at Andrew. For once, he seemed to comprehend, for though he had no reason to do so, he kept quiet about finding her in the broom closet. But a warning look in his eye told her she'd best explain herself soon, or his silence wouldn't last forever.

Neither Thomas nor Benjamin appeared convinced, but they stood aside and let her pass. The breakfast bell rang as Gennie lifted her skirts and sprinted through the grass toward the Ministry House. She could feel the disapproving stares of Believers following the paths to the Center Family dining room, but she couldn't afford to slow down and heed the rules. She had to get to a phone, and fast. She picked up her pace, kicking up dust as she crossed the central path.

She was too late. She knew it as soon as the Ministry House came into view, with a dirt-streaked black Buick parked crookedly on the grass beside it. Grady had already arrived. Gennie stopped abruptly and stood in front of the building, panting. The front doors of the Ministry House opened. Rose stepped through one door, Wilhelm and Grady through the other. Gennie groaned. She did not fear Wilhelm's wrath or Grady's scolding so much as she regretted letting Rose down. Her behavior reflected on Rose. She steeled herself and began to walk toward the group.

“Gennie!” Grady bolted through the grass toward her, then swept her up in his arms. “My sweet one, what happened? Where have you been?” He held her away from him and looked at her disheveled condition. “My God, has anyone—”

“Grady, I'm fine, truly. No one has done anything to me, and to be honest, I just don't think I have the energy to explain right now.” The effects of her brief sleep scrunched up in a closet were catching up with her.

“Thy lack of energy is of no concern to us, young
woman. Explain thyself.” Wilhelm folded his thick arms over his chest and glared at her. Even Rose looked a bit cross. Gennie ran her hand through her rumpled hair, which only served to draw attention to her unkempt appearance. She couldn't tell the truth; that would start an uproar. She'd be thrown out, and Rose would be embarrassed. Yet she couldn't lie to Rose. So she fainted. It was all she could think of, and it was a lie, of course, but a lesser one, she hoped. Grady caught her. She hung limply and prayed she'd be carried to the Infirmary—and that Wilhelm would lose interest in a weak female.

“Let's get her to Josie at once,” Rose said. “Wilhelm, I don't know how long this will take, and I'm sure you want to get back to your work. I'll deal with this.”

Wilhelm grunted. Gennie was tempted to open her eyes to see if he'd left, but she resisted. She let herself hang as deadweight in Grady's arms until she heard Josie's alarmed voice and felt herself being placed on a bed. Then she fluttered her eyelids. She almost went into a real faint when she saw the thunderheads gathering in Rose's eyes, and she knew she was in serious trouble when Rose sent Josie and a protesting Grady from the room, telling them to close the door behind them.

Rose sighed deeply and crossed her arms. Gennie sucked on her lower lip, a habit she'd formed in childhood whenever she'd incurred Rose's wrath.

“The next time you feign a faint,” Rose said, “remember to fall flat on your face. Don't tilt so conveniently toward someone's arms. It's a dead giveaway.” She pulled a visitor's chair next to the bed. “Now, tell me what happened to you. Have you been hurt in any way?” Rose's tone had lightened. Relieved, Gennie sat up and curled her legs underneath her.

She shook her head. “Only my dignity,” she said.

“I am more interested in the truth than in dignity,” Rose said.

A momentary sadness drifted through Gennie's heart as
she realized how far she had wandered from Shaker teachings. Dignity was, of course, a thing of the world. A Believer would willingly mortify herself if it truly glorified God. Pride was unimportant—or worse, it was a hindrance, since it could so easily spill over into hubris.

Gennie told Rose, in precise detail, about her night in the closet of the Medicinal Herb Shop. Rose's expression grew puzzled, but she made no comment as Gennie described what she'd seen in the shop's journals. Nor did she share her thoughts when Gennie had finished. Instead, she stood and silently replaced the chair on its wall pegs. She gave Gennie a warm hug to show that all was well between them.

“Get some rest,” she said, “and then go to the kitchen and tell Gertrude I said to give you a late breakfast. Then rest some more.”

“But—”

“Rest, Gennie. I want you well and out of sight for the time being. Wilhelm has a great deal on his mind and may forget about you if you don't remind him with your presence. Then perhaps I won't be faced with the need to lie to him about your experiences.”

“You would lie to him?”

Rose rubbed her forehead, as if it hurt. Blue-black circles underlined her eyes, and Gennie wondered if she had slept at all the night before. “May God forgive me, sometimes it is necessary.” She gently brushed Gennie's cheek with her fingers. “I can't make sense of what has been happening these last few days, but I'm quite certain that something is wrong in the Medicinal Herb Shop. I don't know how dangerous it is. If what happened to Nora and Betsy is connected to the shop, then it may be life-threatening, and I want you to be safe. Do not work at the shop today.”

“But I—”

“Make me a promise, Gennie.”

Gennie sighed like a frustrated adolescent. “All right, I promise not to work at the Medicinal Herb Shop today.”

Rose had missed breakfast, which was just as well, since it meant she also missed seeing Wilhelm. She decided that Patience had been fasting enough for both of them, so she stopped at the Center Family kitchen for some leftover brown bread. Gertrude and the kitchen sisters were cleaning when she arrived.

“My dear, how I wish you'd been at breakfast,” Gertrude called to her as she entered. “You missed everything! Oh, haven't you eaten? No wonder you are much too thin. Here, sit and eat and I'll tell you what happened. You will be astonished.” After years of kneading bread and wielding heavy trays, first as a kitchen sister and then as Kitchen Deaconess, Gertrude could move quickly and lift as much as most of the brethren. With one arm she snatched a wooden chair from a wall peg, then swept up a plate of bread chunks with the other. After pulling up another chair for herself, she took a deep breath and began speaking, her dishwater-roughened hands waving in excitement.

“If it had been any other day, I wouldn't have seen it, but wouldn't you know, today one of the kitchen sisters was ill, so I said I'd do the serving, since it's so much easier for me than for the others, who are so tiny I'm surprised they can lift themselves.”

Rose waited. For once, she wasn't impatient with Gertrude's rambling conversation; it gave her a chance to chew.

“Well, I was delivering some more water pitchers to the sisters—everyone has been drinking so much water nowadays, what with this dreadful heat. I'd already brought more to the brethren, so I thought, well, I'd better do the same for the sisters. I'd just set a pitcher down next to Irene, and I heard her whisper, which, of course, she shouldn't have been doing at mealtime, but I could understand why, what with that woman never eating anything at all, and how can she keep that tall body of hers going, that's what I'd like to know.”

Rose swallowed quickly. “Patience was at breakfast, then?”

“Yea, that's what I was saying. And I'd have known she was there even if I hadn't seen her myself, because I've gotten so's I can recognize her plate when it comes back. She just takes a little bit of everything, you see, and then she cuts it in tiny pieces and mashes it around the plate so it looks like leftovers, but I wasn't born yesterday. I know my leftovers!” Gertrude leaned back in her chair with an emphatic nod.

Rose, as usual, was confused, but rather than worry about it, she sought the right question. “And you saw something having to do with Patience?” she asked.

“Indeed I did. Patience and Irene. Irene leaned over and whispered to her, and what with me being so close, I could hear. Irene was concerned—she's such a sweet girl, isn't she? She saw that Patience was only pretending to eat, and she was worried, so she whispered to Patience that she knew it was awfully hot but to try and eat even a little bit, even if it didn't taste very good, just to keep up her strength. And that's when it happened. My heavens, I nearly dropped my last water pitcher, and what a mess that would have been. Patience jumped up from the bench so fast she jolted everyone else.” To demonstrate—or, Rose suspected, simply to dramatize—Gertrude jumped to her feet, and her chair scraped behind her. The other kitchen sisters had paused in their work to watch the show.

“Then she held out her arm, like this, and pointed her finger right at Irene's face, no more than an inch from her nose, and then as loud as could be, she shouted at the poor girl. She said, ‘Harlot!' A harlot, she called her. Little Irene. Anyway, she said, ‘Harlot! You have sinned and sinned again! Not one but two!'” Gertrude sat down and leaned toward Rose. “What do you suppose she meant by that?”

“I don't know,” Rose said.

The kitchen phone rang. Gertrude jumped up to answer it before any of the other kitchen sisters could get to it. The
telephone was, after all, an instrument for gossip.

Rose leaned back to consider the implications of Gertrude's story. “Not one but two,” Patience had said. Irene seemed so content as a sister. Could she really be breaking her vows with both Thomas and Benjamin? Or could the sins refer to something else in Irene's past—or present?

A cry from across the kitchen jolted Rose out of her thoughts. She turned her head, as did the other sisters, to see Gertrude hang up the phone receiver and put her face in her hands. Polly ran to her and guided her to a chair. Rose and the others gathered around. They waited in silence as Gertrude sobbed, knowing they were about to hear bad news, and willing to avoid hearing it for a few more moments.

Finally Gertrude lowered her hands and wiped away her tears. Polly pulled a clean hankie from her apron pocket, which Gertrude used noisily. She gulped to steady her voice.

“That was Josie,” she said. “Hugo slipped away while we were eating our breakfast. She thought he seemed better yesterday and this morning. She left him alone to get some herbs from the Herb House and then come here and eat. When she got back, he was gone.”

R
OSE WENT DIRECTLY FROM THE
C
ENTER
F
AMILY KITCHEN
to Agatha's retiring room.

“If you are still hungry, please do finish my breakfast,” Agatha said as Rose entered her room. The former eldress sat in her rocking chair, a light blanket covering her knees, despite the heat. She was sipping tea, but most of her breakfast was still intact on a tray on the table next to her.

“Are you not well?” Rose asked, placing a hand on her forehead as Agatha had done with her many times when, as a child, she had caught a fever and taken to her bed. Agatha's forehead was too cool, as was her hand when Rose took it, as if her blood had thinned to nothing.

“Oh, I'm fine, my dear, just rather upset about losing Hugo. Josie just sent word to me. I know it's best for him, but I will miss him. I suppose it brings to mind my own final journey. Oh now, don't you fret,” Agatha said, as she saw the stricken look on Rose's face. “I'm not packing my bags yet. Now tell me, have you come to talk of Hugo's burial? Josie said it must be done soon because of the heat. I suspect Wilhelm will arrange something very soon.”

“I'm sure he will,” Rose said. “To tell the truth, I wanted to talk with you about some other issues, but if you are feeling too sad . . .”

“Rose, sit,” Agatha said, with her old sternness. “I am
merely indulging myself. To be honest, I would rather be distracted. Tell me these issues of yours.”

Since Agatha had missed breakfast in the dining room, Rose began with Patience's denunciation of Irene, then told her about Gennie's night in the Medicinal Herb Shop, and her discoveries there. Finally she described her own night spent watching Patience's odd ritual on the hill. Agatha was the only one she could trust with such information. Moreover, if anyone could offer any insights into these happenings, it was Agatha, who had been a Shaker for nearly eighty years, thirty-five of them spent as eldress.

Agatha frowned into the distance for a few moments after Rose had finished. Then she lifted the blanket off her knees and reached for her cane, hooked over the arm of her rocking chair. Instinctively Rose reached over to help her, but Agatha shook her head with a show of impatience. Rose sat back and watched with combined concern and pride as Agatha pushed out of her chair and limped over to a small bookshelf that hung from several wall pegs.

Her last stroke had paralyzed her right side. With Josie's help, she had regained use of her arm and leg, but both were weak. She managed her cane with her right hand and did most everything else with her nondominant left hand. But Agatha was a tiny woman, and the bookshelf was too high. Rose understood.

“Is this the book?” Rose asked, casually, so she did not draw attention to Agatha's weakness.

“Yea, the hand-bound one,” Agatha said. “Bring it to the table. I've something to show you.”

Rose pulled both their chairs up to the table and placed the book in front of Agatha.

“When I was a young sister, the Society was very different than it is now,” Agatha said, turning the fragile pages with care. “Mother Ann's Work was done, but it was not just an old story passed from sister to younger sister. I worked many rotations with older sisters who had experienced the Manifestations, some of whom were chosen
instruments. I heard so many wonderful stories.” She smiled and smoothed her hand over a page filled with a young, firm version of her own handwriting. “I was so fascinated that I began to write the stories down at night, in my journal. I was lucky enough to share a retiring room with two girls who didn't report me for writing past bedtime, when there was moonlight.” She turned a few more pages. “Here, this is what I wanted you to see,” she said, squinting at her writing. “At least, I think it is. Read it, Rose. Read the beginning of it out loud, so I can be sure.”