The Blessed (33 page)

“The angels led me here where I could be safe. I was sick for a long time, but my sisters healed me and they loved me and they forgave me.”

“But you could never forgive him?”

“Nay.” Aurelia sent a quick glance toward the preacher’s body and shivered a little. “Could you have?”

“I don’t know.”

“No one can know who hasn’t felt what I felt. But I was able to forget and find happiness here. I really do see the angels, Lacey. I really do.” Her eyes appealed to Lacey. “I want you to believe that. It must have been the devil that brought him here to punish us both.”

“And me? Did you want me to be punished?”

“Nay. I only wanted Rachel to love me. To know I loved her.”

“Do you want to be her mother?” The words almost choked Lacey, but she said them.

Aurelia looked at Lacey for a long time without answering. “I cannot leave this place. I belong here. Evermore.”

“You can be no more than a sister to Rachel here.”

“I know that. Sometimes the things that are best to do hurt the most.” Aurelia licked her lips. “I gave her to you once. I give her to you again.”

Such a wave of relief swept through Lacey that she thought her knees might buckle, but she forced strength back through her. “First you must tell her the angels were wrong when they told her I gave her to the Shakers because I didn’t want her.”

“The angels are never wrong.”

“But it wasn’t the angels talking. It was you.”

Aurelia stared at Lacey for a long moment before she squared her shoulders and said, “I will tell her. For you, Lacey, I will tell her. And then I will bring her to you.”

While she was gone, Brother Forrest brought the wagon and the brothers picked up the preacher and laid him gently in the wagon bed as though even now he might feel pain. Then one of the sisters brought a clean blanket to spread atop the one that was stained with the preacher’s blood. Eldress Frieda came back over to stand silently beside Lacey, whether to offer her support or to guard her, Lacey wasn’t sure which.

“You can sit on the wagon if you wish,” the eldress said after a long time.

“Nay, I am able to stand.” She said the Shaker word purposely. A courtesy to the woman’s kindness. She hesitated a long moment as the silence gathered around them again before she asked, “The other brother, Brother Isaac, was he all right?”

“They say he seemed so when he walked away, but if he has injuries, they will be tended to. You need have no worries in that regard.”

“Thank you,” Lacey said formally and let the silence gather again as the long minutes ticked by. A bell sounded to summon the Shakers back to their duties, and all but Eldress Frieda and Brother Forrest turned obediently for their houses. The day was passing. Not a day like any other, but come morning, they would once again go about their duties the same as yesterday and the day after tomorrow. Lacey had no idea what the days to come would hold for her. Or for Rachel.

“They come,” the eldress said.

Lacey turned to watch Rachel and Aurelia walking slowly toward them. Aurelia held the child’s hand. Rachel looked scared. Lacey had seen the same look on her face the day they’d buried Miss Mona. And the day Sister Janie had taken her hand to lead her away from Lacey here in the Shaker village.

“You must let her decide, as you promised,” Eldress Frieda said.

Lacey didn’t speak. She simply held her hand out to her child. Rachel looked up at Aurelia, who smiled down at her before she took Rachel’s hand and put it into Lacey’s hand. Her little hand felt so good that Lacey had to blink back tears.

“Do you want to go with her, Sister Rachel?” Eldress Frieda’s voice was stern. “Or do you want to stay with your sisters?”

Rachel looked solemnly up at Lacey. “I want to go with Lacey. She loves me more than all the worms under the ground.”

Lacey blinked hard and choked back a sob before she could say, “But not as much as Jesus.”

“But plenty enough,” Rachel said and grabbed Lacey around the waist.

The tears spilled out of Lacey’s eyes and streamed down her cheeks. Aurelia reached over and gently wiped them away. “The pure in heart. Don’t let her forget how much I loved her,” she said softly before she turned to walk away with the eldress.

And now they were carrying the preacher back to his rightful burying spot beside Miss Mona. No one spoke the whole journey. Not Brother Forrest. Not Lacey. Not Rachel. But Rachel leaned her head against Lacey’s breast and that was enough.

When Brother Forrest stopped the horses in front of the church, he stared down at his hands on the reins as he said, “What are you going to tell them when they ask how he died?”

He looked up at the church graveyard and she knew his thinking. Those who killed themselves were laid outside sanctified ground. Her voice carried not a whiff of doubt as she looked toward Miss Mona’s headstone. “I’ll tell them what happened. That he lost his balance and fell from a roof.”

Brother Forrest was silent for a moment as he seemed to be considering her words. Then he nodded slightly. “Yea, you’ll be speaking the truth.”

33

The funeral was plain. The church was still without a pastor and nobody suggested bringing in a preacher from town for the services. This or that deacon had been filling the pulpit.What with it being planting season, none of them had the time to be out hunting preachers. Lacey was just as glad. It only seemed right to have one of the deacons stand up and read the Scripture and pray the prayers over the man who had been their leader for so many years.

Deacon Morrison spoke the words over the preacher’s body. Normally Deacon Crutcher would have been the one chosen for such a job, but it had only been a week since he’d laid his youngest son in the ground. Nobody would have looked ill on him if he hadn’t shown up at the church at all. But he had come, hammering and sawing with the rest to build the casket box while Reuben and some others dug a grave out next to Miss Mona.

Lacey had sat in the church the whole time. In the preacher’s wife’s pew. She hadn’t been a proper wife to him in life, but she could do right by him in death. So she kept watch over the preacher in her Shaker dress. She stripped off the white collar and draped a black shawl over her shoulders that somebody brought her. She didn’t remember who. The churchwomen had streamed to the church to offer kindness to her. And to Rachel. More than one of them offered to take Rachel home with them and give her a bed the night before. The women waited for Lacey to make the child go, but Rachel clung to Lacey.

So she had put her arm around Rachel and pulled her even closer while she told the well-meaning women no. “The last few weeks have been hard for Rachel. I’ll let her do what she wants.”

Rachel relaxed against her and Lacey was glad that she didn’t have to stop touching her. Besides, the child needed to be there with her father. No one but Lacey and Aurelia knew that truth, but if someday Rachel asked about her father, Lacey could tell her that she’d kept the death watch over him. The churchwomen brought food and a quilt and a pillow for Rachel. Then after they prayed with Lacey and over the preacher, they’d all left except for two of the older women who had no young children at home.

Cassie and Jo Ann settled into the pew on either side of her and Rachel to sit through the night with them. They talked of grandchildren and crops and garden beans for a while, but eventually the talk turned to the trouble that had befallen the church. First little Jimmy’s accident and now the preacher.

The older of the two, Jo Ann, clucked her tongue when she talked about how Sadie Rose had taken to her bed and turned her face to the wall. “Poor Deacon Crutcher is quite beside himself with grief not just for the boy but for Sadie Rose too. And the dear boys. Lost their little brother and now their mother can’t pull herself together to give them any sort of comfort.”

“Such a shame. She’s always been so strong in the spirit.” Cassie shook her head. She was a heavy woman who suffered in the heat, and now she plucked a cardboard fan from the pew behind them and began to wave it in front of her face. “She and Mona had a way of taking the Bible and walking a troubled soul through it until they found some peace. But they say the poor woman won’t even put her hand on a Bible since little Jimmy passed on.”

“It’s only been a few days,” Lacey murmured. “It can’t be easy to lose a child.” Her arm tightened around Rachel, dozing against her side.

“You don’t have to tell me that. I’ve buried two,” Cassie said, her voice solemn. “That was before you came to stay with Mona. One dear little baby girl never drew breath and the other, a boy, took a fever when he was two.”

“We aren’t promised a life without troubles. That’s for sure,” Jo Ann said as she reached across Lacey and Rachel to pat Cassie’s hand. “But you carried on.”

“What else can a body do?” Cassie sighed sadly. “The Bible promises the Lord won’t heap more on us than we can bear up under, but there’s been times when I’ve had to wonder.” She gave Lacey a concerned look in the dim lamplight. “But I shouldn’t be going on about my griefs. You’ve got enough troubles right now without me adding to your sorrow. If you want to try to doze a little, we’ll keep the watch.”

“No, I’ll watch. I owe him that much. He tried to do right by me.”

That was what she was prepared to tell his congregation if they asked her to say words, but they didn’t. Deacon Morrison did the talking. For them all, he said. His voice shook as he told about building the church house and how young they’d all been then. Over thirty years before. Deacon Crutcher sat in his accustomed pew with his four remaining sons and listened. He looked pale and troubled and made no move to get up to add any words to Deacon Morrison’s. He did add his strength to the other deacons and Reuben to carry the preacher out to the grave and carefully lower the coffin by ropes into the hole.

After Deacon Morrison solemnly spoke the dust-to-dust grave words, all but the deacons and Reuben turned back to the church house where the women had filled a wagon bed with covered dishes on the shady side of the church away from the graveyard. Lacey held Rachel’s hand tight as they turned to follow the women, but Deacon Crutcher stepped in front of them.

“That’s our boy’s grave.” He pointed toward a new mound of dirt in the far corner of the graveyard.

“Reuben told me. I’m sorry,” Lacey said. “Both of us are.” She held Rachel’s hand even tighter.

“My Sadie Rose is taking it hard.” The creases in his weather-beaten face got deeper.

“I guess that’s no wonder.” She wanted to say something to help him, but there were no words. “It’s a grievous thing for the both of you.”

“The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,” he said quietly before he turned his eyes away from his child’s grave back to her. “You planning on going back over there to that Shaker town?” He had his hat still in his hand from the funeral and he twisted the brim as he waited for her answer.

“No. They work hard and there is kindness among them. Some good men and women, but I couldn’t wrap my mind around their peculiar way of worshiping. Or of dividing up families.” Rachel eased a little closer to her and Lacey put her arm around the child and let the thankful prayer that she could do so rise up in her heart yet again.

“Then what are you thinking on doing?”

“I don’t know.” She hadn’t really thought past the funeral. She looked over toward the preacher’s house where she’d known so many happy days, but she couldn’t expect them to let her stay there for long. They would need to move in a new preacher. “I don’t know,” she repeated.

“I’d count it a favor if you’d come stay with us a spell. You know, just till Sadie Rose finds her strength again. Me and the boys, we need to be out in the fields. But it’s more than the chores. I’m thinking it might be good to have a woman in the house she could talk to.”

“I have Rachel,” Lacey said.

“I’m knowing that. I was meaning the both of you.” His eyes touched on Rachel. He tried to smile, but his eyes stayed sad. “It will be good to have a little girl in the house.”

So after the grave was filled in and they ate with the good sound of the church people’s voices mixed with some laughter and a few tears, Lacey and Rachel climbed up on the seat of Deacon Crutcher’s wagon beside him. The boys piled in the back with the oldest boy, Harry, carefully holding the heaped-up plate of food the churchwomen fixed for his mother.

“She won’t eat it,” Deacon Crutcher said with a nod back toward the boy. “She ain’t hardly ate a bite since before.”

Lacey was quiet for a while as they rode along. Finally she said, “I might not be able to help her.”

For a minute she wasn’t sure he’d heard her when he kept his eyes straight ahead on the road in front of them with his jaw clenched tight, but then he said, “That could be, but if it is, then at least we’ll have helped you. And the little girl. The Lord will honor that.”

At the house, Lacey made Rachel wait on the settee in the front room while she went in to talk to Sadie Rose. It was the first time she hadn’t been touching the child since Aurelia put her hand in Lacey’s the day before at the Shaker village. Rachel looked ready to cry until the second youngest boy, Richard, sat down beside her and began telling her about catching crawdads in the creek out behind the house. Richard was like his mother. Or at least like his mother had been before. Lacey didn’t know how she would be now.

She tapped lightly on the bedroom door and listened for a response but heard nothing. She hesitated a moment before she pushed open the door. The room was dark with heavy curtains pulled tight closed over the one window. Lacey stood still inside the door to let her eyes adjust to the dimness. “Miss Sadie Rose,” she said softly. The woman was on the bed, covered with a quilt that had to be bringing out the sweat in the stuffy room. “You awake?”

Sadie Rose answered without lifting her head to look around. “I’m not up to talking to anybody today. The boys should have told you that.”

Lacey ignored her words and walked over to the bed. She sat down right beside her. “It’s me, Sadie Rose. I’ve come to stay with you a spell, seeing as how I don’t have anywhere else to go. I hope you won’t be upset with Deacon Crutcher for offering to take us in.” She laid her hand on the woman’s shoulder.

“Lacey, is that really you?” She shifted under the quilt and turned toward Lacey.

Lacey wished she’d gone over and pulled back the curtains so she could see the woman’s face better. But maybe it wouldn’t matter. Maybe the Lord would still put the right words in her mouth to offer the beginnings of comfort. “It’s me. You knew the preacher died, didn’t you?”

“Harold told me.” The silence built in the room for a moment before she went on in a flat voice. “You heard about Jimmy.”

“Reuben carried the news to me. I’m sorry.”

“Sometimes I think my heart has withered up. I can’t even cry anymore and he was my baby. A mother ought to cry for her baby, but I’m all dry ash inside. There’s nothing left.”

“No mother could love her baby any more than you loved Jimmy,” Lacey said.

“Loving him didn’t keep him from dying.”

“I know. I’m sorry,” Lacey said again. Useless words in the face of Sadie Rose’s grief. If only she could call down Miss Mona to talk through her the way Aurelia said her angels spoke through her. But she couldn’t. All she could do was keep her hand firm on Sadie Rose’s shoulder and hurt with the woman.

Lacey had no idea how many minutes had ticked past when Sadie Rose said, “What about the Shaker village?” She turned her head to look at Lacey.

“It wasn’t the right place for the preacher. Or for me.”

“I should have gone. Me and Harold should have packed up and gone with Brother Palmer. We should have.”

Lacey frowned. “Why would you think such a thing?”

“Don’t you see? If I had gone with the preacher, Jimmy would still be alive. He wouldn’t have got on that horse.” Sadie Rose shifted uneasily in the bed and grabbed Lacey’s hand. “Maybe that was how God punished my unbending spirit. I was too proud of what I believed and not willing to listen to what the Lord could have been telling me through the preacher.”

“But the preacher died there when he might not have if he hadn’t gone to the Shakers.” Lacey squeezed her hand. “Bad things happen. Everywhere.”

“That’s what Harold tells me.”

“But you don’t believe it?”

Lacey thought Sadie Rose was going to turn her face back to the wall and not answer. In her mind Lacey whispered the silent prayer,
Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.
She wanted comfort for Sadie Rose. She wanted her to feel blessed even in the midst of sorrow. Blessed the way Lacey had told Aurelia she was. Even if Rachel had not come away from the Shaker village with her. Even if she never knew the kind of love that Isaac had known for his wife and that had seemed to be awakening between them. Even if she had to live dependent on others’ charity forevermore, still she was blessed. Miss Mona had always told her that the Lord loved her. That he would put joy and belief in her heart if she would just let him. And now she’d let him.

“I’ve always believed,” Sadie Rose finally whispered. “Always. Since before I can remember. But now I see nothing but darkness. I lay here and think about Mona and what she would say if she was here. She’d be ashamed of my weakness. I’m ashamed of my weakness.”

“No, she’d grieve with you and maybe read the Bible to you. She’d show you where it says we are weak but he is strong.”

“That’s in Corinthians. I’ve shown that very verse to others in despair, never thinking I’d fall into the same despair myself some day.” Sadie Rose clung to Lacey’s hand as she raised her head up off the pillow. “What’s another one she would tell me?”

Lacey shut her eyes and the verse came to her. From where she didn’t know. “The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart.”

“She’d tell me that. I can almost hear her voice right in here with us.” She shoved the quilt back and pushed herself up to a sitting position against the headboard of the bed. “I’m glad you’re here, Lacey. There’s been times our spirits have been at odds, but could be the Lord set you down in this place for a reason. First Mona, then Rachel, and now me.”